Hospitalization risk factors of older cohorts of home health care patients: A systematic review

ABSTRACT

Nearly one million Medicare home health care beneficiaries are hospitalized annually of which one-quarter are considered preventable. Older hospitalized patients are at risk for nosocomial complications and poorer outcomes and incur higher health care costs. This paper reports the results of a systematic review of 28 studies on hospitalization risk factors of older home health care patients. It found that males, Blacks, and non-Asian minorities are at greater hospitalization risk. Factors associated with higher risk included skin ulcers, psychiatric conditions, dyspnea/COPD, cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, functional deficits, more comorbidities, and higher medication usage. These findings can inform practice, research, and policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Home health care
• older people
• hospitalization
• rehospitalization
• readmission
• risk factors

Contributions

IB conceived the study, conducted the literature search and drafted the manuscript. Both authors screened articles for inclusion and methodological quality; read, critically revised and approved the final manuscript.

Prior Submissions

An early version of this research entitled “Hospitalization Risks of Elderly Home Health Care Patients with Dementia: A Systematic Review” was presented as a poster at the 30th Annual Eastern Nursing Research Society Scientific Sessions on April 11, 2018.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Future of Nursing Scholars program. The authors would like to thank Kristine Kulage for providing editorial guidance in refining the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.