Trial design, setting, and participants
death
The present study followed a parallel three-arm study design in which the households were evenly distributed. The three parallel arms evaluated a (i) control group, who continued usual home care (including unstructured paper–pencil documentation), (ii) a partial intervention group, which used e-learning and networking platforms, and (iii) a full intervention group, which used the entire intervention (e-learning platform, networking platform, and digital care documentation). The framework was designed to test for the superiority of the intervention. Outcomes were assessed at baseline and two follow-up assessments were planned at 3 and 12 months, but these were actually performed at an average of 5 and 9 months, respectively. A household was considered eligible for inclusion if (i) the household was currently receiving a 24-h-care service, (ii) the household was located in the federal territory of Austria, (iii) the 24h-caregiver was able and willing to comply with all study-related procedures and provided informed consent, and (iv) the care receiver was aged ≥ 55 years. In contrast, households were excluded if (i) the care receiver had died, (ii) 24-h care was terminated for reasons other than the death of the care receiver, and (iii) 24-h care was interrupted for ≥ 8 weeks. No changes were made to the eligibility criteria or trial outcomes after starting the trial. This paper has been written as per the CONSORT checklist of information to be included for reporting a randomized trial [In a mixed-methods approach that integrates (i) investigator observations, (ii) interviews with 24h-caregivers, (iii) interviews with relatives, and (iv) interviews with care receivers (where possible), trained investigators should provide reliable ratings on the care receivers' quality of life via triangulation [