ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: As the population with chronic degenerative disease or functional impairment has increased in terms of the advanced aging society, the inevitability of home health services for the homebound have been augmented as a token of the trend toward the nuclear family along with the family capacity of care declined. For the past several years, home nursing service facilities have been enlarged and partially have been fulfilling these requirements. However, there are a great number of demands for home health service by physicians. Thereupon, we designed the following study to observe the cases of home visits by a medical office practice and to provide some information about the need of the home visit and its clinical features. METHODS: The study was conducted reviewing currently remained 84 data of home visit records at a home-visit- specialized medical office practice for 10 months in 1999. Its information collected was as below: patient's sex, age, frequency and duration of visit, distance to visit location, reason being homebound, and reason for visit. RESULTS: Of the reviewed records of 84 patients, comprised of 356 home visits, the median age of the patients was 67.5 years. They were visited 2 times as a median and with a median duration of 4 days. Physician drove a median distance of 6.1km one-way. Most common diagnoses were cancer and cerebrovascular diseases, equally with 10.8%. Reasons for being homebound were neurologic problem (28.6%), frail elderly (21.4%), terminal illness (20.2%) in order. Sixty two patients (73.8%) were permanently homebound and 12 patients (14.3%) were not. Reasons for visits were routine follow-up (42.1%) and evaluation of a new problem (19.9%) in the chronic homebound and terminal illness care (17.1%). While 102 visits (28.6%) should have begun by doctor-based visit, 233 visits (65.4%) including routine follow-up could be considered to be replaced for home nursing services. Even out of 233 visits, not all could be replaced and some should remain as physician's regular follow-up. CONCLUSION: There were needs of home visit in both permanent and transient homebound patients, in cases of exacerbation, new problem and routine follow-up of chronic homebound patients, and also in acute illness of previously healthy persons. To meet the needs of homebound patients in seeing the physician, and to offer adequate health services, the physician's role should be acknowledged in home nursing service, and home visit by physician should be institutionalized and carried into effect.