Objective To assess the effectiveness of Problem-Solving Therapy (PST) on family caregivers through the use of scales to measure anxiety, depression and emotional distress; and to explore facilitating factors and obstacles for its use based on the narrative of nurses. Method A clinical trial and an exploratory focus group with the use of mixed analysis methodology. The study was conducted in a ...

Many people living with dementia are supported at home using a variety of health and social care services. This paper reports the findings from a focus group study undertaken with staff in community mental health teams to explore areas for improvement in relation to national policies and recommendations for dementia care. Two focus groups were held with staff (n = 23) in 2011 to discuss topics ...

As the pressure to reduce the length of hospital stays increases, use of home care services is increasing1. As a result of health care reforms in the province of Ontario beginning in the mid-1990s, the setting for some health care services has shifted from the hospital to the home. Benefits of a home care system include reduced pressure on acute care facilities through expeditious discharge of ...

Electronic textiles (e-textiles) offer the promise of home health care devices that integrate seamlessly into the wearer's everyday lifestyle while providing a higher level of functionality than current devices. Existing gait analysis systems are cumbersome laboratory-based systems that, while providing valuable information, would be difficult or impossible to deploy in the home. Yet gait analy...

Community Care Julia Twigg L. C. Burbridge, The labor market for home care workers: demand, supply, and institutional barriers, The Gerontologist, 33, 1 (1993), 41-46. P. H. Feldman, Work life improvements for home care workers: impact and feasibility, The Gerontologist, 33, 1 (1993), 47~54N. N. Eustis, R. A. Kane and L. R. Fischer, Home care quality and the home care worker: beyond quality ass...

Contracted services have gained greater emphasis in the home care standards and survey process over the past several years, especially as they relate to the quality and safety of the services provided. This column reviews 2004-2005 standard LD.3.50, its applicable elements of performance, and discusses the Joint Commission's requirements for evaluating the care and services provided by contract...

During the late 1990s, the U.S. government instituted an interim payment system (IPS) to constrain Medicare home health care expenditures. Previous research has focused largely on the implications of the IPS for Medicare patients; this study broadens the analysis to consider patients with other payer sources. Using the National Home and Hospice Care Survey, we found similar effects of the IPS a...

In this study, the association between Medicare regulations and the provision of public home health care is examined. Medicare clients were compared with non-Medicare groups of those 65 years of age or over and those under 65. Results suggested that both age- and payer-related factors contribute to utilization of services. Older patients showed greater need for chronic illness care relative to ...

The paucity of home health care referrals for occupational therapy led us to develop an educational approach to increase both the referral sources and the number of referrals to occupational therapy. With a consistent effort to exercise clearly identified strategies, the occupational therapy referrals at the Visiting Nurse Association of Porter County, Indiana, increased threefold from the numb...

In the last few years, many health monitoring systems have been designed to fullfil the needs of a large range of scenarios. Although many of those systems provide good ad hoc solutions, most of them lack of mechanisms that allow them to be easily reused. This paper is focused on describing an open platform, the micro Web of Things Open Platform (µWoTOP), which has been conceived to improve the...