Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Home Care Services Among Community-Dwelling Adults With Dementia.
J Am Med Dir Assoc
; 22(11): 2258-2262.e1, 2021 11.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1440152
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
To examine how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted use of home care services for individuals with dementia across service types and sociodemographic strata.DESIGN:
Population-based time series analysis. SETTING ANDPARTICIPANTS:
Community-dwelling adults with dementia in Ontario, Canada, from January 2019 to September 2020.METHODS:
We used health administrative databases (Ontario Registered Persons Database and Home Care Database) to measure home care services used by participants. Poisson regression models were fit to compare weekly rates of home care services during the pandemic to historical trends with rate ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) stratified by service type (nursing, personal care, therapy), sex, rurality, and neighborhood income quintile.RESULTS:
During the first wave of the pandemic, personal care fell by 16% compared to historical levels (RR 0.84, 95% CI 0.84, 0.85) and therapies fell by 50% (RR 0.50, 95% CI 0.48, 0.52), whereas nursing did not significantly decline (RR 1.02, 95% CI 1.00, 1.04). All rates had recovered by September 2020, with nursing and therapies higher than historical levels. Changes in services were largely consistent across sociodemographic strata, although the rural population experienced a larger decline in personal care and smaller rebound in nursing. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Personal care and therapies for individuals with dementia were interrupted during the early months of the pandemic, whereas nursing was only minimally impacted. Pandemic responses with the potential to disrupt home care for individuals living with dementia must balance the impacts on individuals with dementia, caregivers, and providers.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Dementia
/
COVID-19
/
Home Care Services
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
Limits:
Adult
/
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Journal:
J Am Med Dir Assoc
Journal subject:
History of Medicine
/
Medicine
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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