Abstract

Background: About 80% of disability cases in Taiwan were taken care of at home, and home-based medical care is an important way to enable severe chronic cases to obtain extended continuous care from the medical team at home.

Purpose: To discuss the status of home health care cases and their one-year prognosis.

Method: A total of 436 patients who received home health care from amedical center in central Taiwan from August 2017 to July 2018 were investigated by retrospective medical records.

Result: The average age of the cases was 79.2 ± 13.7 years old, 59.9% were over 80 years old, 56.0% were women, 78.4% were completely dependent, 42.7% had good understanding ability. One year later, 71.8% of the patients with stable condition, 3.9% improved, 14.9% died, 7.8% were admitted to long-term care institutions or hospitalized. Under adjusted gender and dependence status, those with poor understanding ability the odds of death were 2.6 times that of those with good understanding.

Conclusion: Home health care is one of the important policies for the implementation of continuous care under the health insurance system in Taiwan. The case mortality rate in this study was lower than reported in the literature, and the chance of death in cases with good understanding ability was relatively lower. This showed that home health care had a certain effect, and the evaluation or assessment of cases understanding ability were an important element, which could be used as a reference for nursing staff training and improving the quality of home health care in the future.