Home Visits in an Office Practice in Seoul

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.

Determinants of Self-assessed Health among Elderly Adults

BACKGROUND: Self-assessed health is a crude and simple measure which was used as a summary of an individual's general state of health. In this study, we examined the relationship between comprehensive variables and self-assessed health and identified the major determinants of self-assessed health among community dwelling elderly. METHODS: We performed a study on variables using comprehensive geriatric assessment in 308 elderly people who visited the department of family medicine or the department physical medicine and rehabilitation of 11 university hospitals or general hospitals in Korea from July 1, 1999 through October 31, 1999. The association of self-assessed health and variables was examined by X2-test and multiple linear regression analysis. For dependent variable a question "How would you describe your health now?" was used and the subjects responded from these categories: very good, good, fair, poor, and very poor. The independent variables were sociodemographic characters, health behavior, diseases, physical and social function, family and social support. RESULTS: In the X2-test, self-assessed health was significantly associated with income, exercise, nutrition, number of disease, cardiac disease, cerebrovascular disease, fall, ADLs, IADLs, depression and social support. In the multiple linear regression analysis, majority of the explained variance in self-assessed health was nutrition, cardiac disease and depression. CONCLUSION: Self-assessed health among older adults was influenced by various factors. Based on the results, multidimensional approach needs to be developed to improve health.