Map of the Week: Quality of Care in England

RocketMill are a digital marketing agency working on behalf of Caring Homes, a leading UK care home provider. As businesses, they share similar values: they are people-centred, value transparency and are both innovative. This interactive data graphic is completely in line with these values. Krystian Szastok was the project leader and the creator of the map and concept.

Why this map was made

Quality of care since the introduction of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has become a more transparent area. However, the inspections and data were only available for singular homes and providers.

We wanted to present the ratings in a geographical and visual format, and discover any ties to affluence or life expectancy by data analysis.

Data

The data came from the Care Quality Commission website and the Office for National Statistics. The csv files, with all the checks the CQC carries out, were available on their site and then geocoded on county level. Similarly, the ONS data was available on their site and then geocoded to the same level for consistency.

Process

We’ve looked at many solutions to visualising the data, but CartoDB was the best tool available and the graphics and functionality were both exceptional. We’ve geotagged the data and then used the styling wizard to clearly visualise it and emphasise the findings.

Final result

Below is a screenshot of the final map – one of three that were generated. The final page, using the maps and representing the findings, is on the Caring Homes website. Thanks to the team at RocketMill for making the lovely landing page to host the map and to CQC, ONS and Caring Homes for the data and all the assistance in the process.

You can also take a look at the datasets already processed that were used in this visualizations, available in the Caring Homes CartoDB Public Profile