Centre for Policy on Ageing



Decreasing hospitalization rates for older home care patients with symptoms of depression
Author(s)	Joseph H Flaherty, Mary McBride, Shaden Marzouk
Journal title	Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, vol 46, no 1, January 1998
Pages	pp 31-38
Keywords	Depression ; Domiciliary services ; Admission [hospitals] ; Drugs ; Personnel ; Training [welfare work] ; United States of America.
Annotation	Home care studies that have targeted older patients at risk for hospital admission due to various medical conditions have been successful in preventing hospital admission. The aim of this study was to target medically ill older patients with symptoms of depression in order to reduce their rate of hospitalisation. Using the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM), an intervention was developed which involved education of and information to staff, use of the Geriatric Depression Scale for screening, and medication. Overall, the TQM intervention patients had a hospitalisation rate of 23.5% compared with a rate of 40.6% for the control group. No single type of intervention seemed to lower hospitalisation rates more than others. (AKM).
Accession Number	CPA-980313407 A
Classmark	ENR: N: LD:QKH: LLD: QM: QW: 7T
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.