Grant: Project Grant

Home care clients are a large and medically complex subgroup of community-dwelling older adults. Older adults have higher rates of emergency department use relative to younger persons and their share of emergency department visits have swelled. Home care clients have double the emergency department utilization rate compared to nursing home residents and other community dwelling older adults. High emergency department use among home care clients reflects their relative health complexity, and the lack of appropriate supportive chronic disease management services in the community-based home care. Building on our previous pilot work, we propose a three-year research agenda to further adapt and test chronic disease management interventions in home care. Known as the DIVERT-CARE (Collaboration Action Research & Evaluation) Study, the project will be led by a multi-provincial collaboration of home care partners and researchers. Specifically, we will evaluate the following questions: 1) What factors impede chronic disease management from the perspective of clients/families and home care providers? 2) Can targeted interventions reduce emergency department visits and enhance quality of life compared to controls? 3) If effective, is there evidence of cost-effectiveness?