2020 Volume 40 Pages 40-46
Purpose: To identify the characteristics of older adults living alone who received in-home long-term care support, were approved for long-term care, and used visiting nursing care services at the start of their in-home care.
Methods: Five-year data were collected from documentation related to long-term care certification and from in-home long-term care service records for 100 older adults who lived alone. In the analysis, the characteristics of those individuals were compared with those of older adults living alone who did not use visiting nursing care services.
Results: When they first began receiving support from long-term care support providers, 21 individuals (21%) in the sample used visiting nursing care and 79 (79%) did not. There were significant differences during the home-care period depending on the disease (p = .024). Among those who used visiting nursing care immediately, a significantly higher proportion had cancer (p = .008), had undergone a medical procedure (p = .013), or needed to use visiting medical care services (p = .019).
Conclusion: The results suggest that among older adults living alone who qualify for long-term care services, those who use visiting nursing care at the start of their in-home care with care management tend to be those with cancer or in need of medical attention.
