A suggested mortality benefit with integrated health care versus conventional home health care in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

In Taiwan, the Integrated Home Care (IHC) project was introduced for medically compromised patients living at home receiving Home Health Care (HHC) in 2016. The focus of the project was on organizing care teams and managing care for patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the benefits and impacts of IHC in Taiwan. The primary outcome measure was the mortality rate of patients who received IHC versus those who did not receive IHC (non-IHC). The secondary outcomes were medical utilization and expenditure. The results showed that IHC was associated with a statistically significant reduction in mortality compared to non-IHC for home-dwelling patients over 90-, 180-, and 365-days periods. Additionally, IHC users were less likely to be hospitalized and had shorter hospitalization times compared to non-IHC users. Furthermore, IHC was found to reduce medical expenditure compared to non-IHC.

KEYWORDS:

• Integrated home care
• home health care
• mortality rate
• medical utilization and expenditure

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01621424.2023.2195810

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare [MOHW-109-CMB-02].