Estimating Threshold for Good Quality of Life in Aged Care Residents: Anchor-Based Cut-Off for the Quality of Life-Aged Care Consumers Instrument

Author(s)

Jyoti Khadka, PhD1, Jia Song, PhD2, Rachel Milte, PhD2, Julie Ratcliffe, PhD2.
1Associate Professor, Flinders University, Highbury, Australia, 2Caring Futures Institute, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.

Presentation Documents

OBJECTIVES: With ageing populations and increasing demand for aged care , quality of life (QOL) has become a central focus of recent policy reforms In Australia and other countries. The Quality of Life-Aged Care Consumer (QOL-ACC), a preference-based measure, was introduced as a mandatory national quality indicator across Australia in 2023 to support assessment and public reporting of variation in QOL across long term aged care facilities (LTCFs). While its national implementation is a significant step forward, further guidance is needed to support the interpretation of QOL-ACC scores in practice. Therefore, this study aimed to establish cut-off scores on the QOL-ACC to differentiate between good and poor QOL among aged care residents.
METHODS: Data were collected through self-reports from LTCFs residents and proxy reports from informal carers. An anchor-based method was used, comparing QOL-ACC summative scores (range: 0 to 24; higher scores indicate better QOL) against two global items of health and QOL. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis assessed the discriminative ability of different QOL-ACC scores in identifying residents who rated their global health or quality of life as “good” or better. Sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC) were calculated.
RESULTS: Of the total 307 care recipients included (196 [64%] self-reports and 111 [36%] proxy-reports), the majority were female (64.2%) with a mean age of 84 ± 8.2 years. A QOL-ACC summative score of ≥19 was identified as the optimal threshold for indicating good quality of life, with a sensitivity of 71.3%, specificity of 70.4%, and an AUC of 0.82 (95% CI: 0.77-0.87), indicating good discriminative ability.
CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a practical and evidence based interpretive benchmark for QOL-ACC scores. The identified cut-off supports the identification of residents with lower quality of life and can inform care planning, service evaluation, and quality improvement efforts.

Conference/Value in Health Info

2025-09, ISPOR Real-World Evidence Summit 2025, Tokyo, Japan

Value in Health Regional, Volume 49S (September 2025)

Code

RWD198

Topic Subcategory

Distributed Data & Research Networks

Disease

SDC: Geriatrics

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