Can quality of life be better for older adults receiving home health care?

ABSTRACT

Background@#Home health care is a system of clinical care provided by skilled practitioners to patients in their homes. These visitations have positive effect on health, quality of life (QOL) and promote independence among elderly@*Objective@#This study aimed to evaluate the Quality of Life (QOL) of geriatric patients rendered home health care and ambulatory care in community-based clinic@*Subjects and Setting@#Older adults from an urban-based barangay in Metro Manila who received medical care from Family Medicine residents and post graduate interns at home and in the community-based clinic.@*Methods@#This cross-sectional study with ex post facto design used purposive sampling. The following tools were administered WHOQOL-BREF FIL OP, validated for Filipino elderly to measure QOL; Katz’s Index Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and Lawton’s Instrumental ADLs to determine the functional status. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize all data. Mann–Whitney U test and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were employed@*Results@#A total of 29 patients were recruited. A comparison of QOL between outpatient (n=16) and home health care (n=13) showed that all domains physical, psychosocial, social and environmental of home-visited patients had higher mean scores compared to ambulatory care patients. However, the difference was not statistically different. QOL was higher in the home care patients (mean 3.3125) versus the ambulatory care patients (mean 3.0000). Same trend was seen in perceived general health.@*Conclusion@#Home health patients still had higher mean scores in all domains of QOL than those who seek in outpatient care. They had better scores in perceived overall QOL and general health. These findings though statistically not significant suggest possible benefits of home care and its potential to improve the quality of life of older adults. Inclusion of QOL measures could allow for comprehensive evaluation of outcomes of treatment and home care services provided.