Current terminal care services present dying patients and their families with a dichotomy in service delivery and the intentcare between curative treatments and palliative treatments. This arbitrary dichotomy reduces ...
详细信息
Objective. To determine the relationship among 11 types of home health care services for patients with HIV/AIDS and to develop a terminal-care, service-usage profile of persons receiving such services. Services includ...
详细信息
Objective. To determine the relationship among 11 types of home health care services for patients with HIV/AIDS and to develop a terminal-care, service-usage profile of persons receiving such services. Services include the number of psychiatric nurse visits, MedicalSocial Work (MSW) visits, evaluation visits, physical therapy visits, occupational therapy visits, homemaker visits, home health aide visits, public health nurse visits, registered nurse (RN) visits, Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN) visits, and Intravenous (IV) nurse visits. Data Sources and Study Setting. Data were collected on 549 AIDS patients admitted for medical/surgical home-care services to the Visiting Nurse Association of Los Angeles (VNA-LA). The service utilization data were collected from the VNA-LA’s computerized datasystem. Study Design. The relationship among the service types was evaluated with principal component analysis. A service-usage profile was developed for patients using cluster analysis. To control for the variability in the amount of time that patients were on service, the numberof days that patients were in the VNA-LA program and were actuallyreceiving services was included as a factor that yielded a variable reflecting the number of each type of service that a patient received perday. Principal Findings. Five components were found to best describe the relationships among the service-type variables. These were identified as being: the Number of Evaluation Visits, the Number of Intensive Nursing Visits, the Number of Physical Therapy Visits, theNumber of Psychosocial Visits, and the Number of Attendant *** were found to cluster into 1 of 5 groups based on the type ofservice utilization profile that they received. The variables that appeared to have the most influence on this profile were the number ofhome health aide visits per day that the patient received, the numberof RN visits that were made, the number of IV nurse visits that wereprovided, and the number of LVN v
暂无评论