Homebound Status and the Critical Role of Caregiving Support

ABSTRACT

The homebound population relies on both paid and family caregivers to meet their complex care needs. In order to examine the association between intensity of caregiving support and leaving the home, we identified a population of community-dwelling, homebound Medicare beneficiaries age ≥65 (n = 1,852) enrolled in the 2015 National Health and Aging Trends Study and measured the support they received from paid and family caregivers. Those who had ≥20 h of caregiving support per week had 50% less odds of being “exclusively homebound” (rarely or never leave home) (OR 0.56, p < .01). Policies that facilitate increased support for family caregivers and better access to paid caregivers may allow homebound individuals who would otherwise be isolated at home to utilize existing community-based long-term care services and supports.

KEYWORDS:

• Homebound
• family caregiving
• paid caregiving
• long-term care
• home and community-based services

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Aging [K01AG047923 and P30AG02874110].