Epidemiological study on domiciliary care for frail and bedridden elderly persons

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Geriatric intermediate care facility (GICF) started in 1987 as a subsidiary organization of the Ministry of Health and Welfare to promote the return of elderly persons from hospital to their homes. The facility enables to stay for three months.To evaluate the function of the GICF located around a urban city, we investigated the activities of daily living and mental status of the elderly persons (designated as user) staying in the GICF,the type of residence before admission and after discharge, admission period in GILF,and interchange between users and their families. The subjects were 121 persons aged above 70 years, and 72 their caregivers.About 53% of the users were bedridden, and 68% of them had senile dementia. Although they have children, they had lived alone before admitting to the GICF.The destinations after the discharge from the GICF were hospital (60%) and their home (29%). Most of the users stayd over three months in the GICF.Frequency of stay out overnight at their homes, frequency of seeing between users and their families, and number of children did not relate to return to their home.Most of the caregivers were daughters of daughters-in-law, and considered themselves to be healthy. Sixty-three percent of the caregivers had jobs. However, most of the caregivers did not have sub-caregivers. Not many caregivers (19.4%) wanted to go back to their home after discharge, and their preferred discharge destination was home (19.4%), hospitals (55.5%), and nursing homes (25.1%).These findings suggest that to discharge the users from the GICF and to return them to their homes successfully, domiciliary care with combining use of GICF and public health and welfare services such as type E day service and home help service is to be strongly recommended to user's family. Abstract