People using home care packages spend more than twice as many days in hospital as those living in residential aged care facilities.
That’s the surprising key finding of a South Australian study that looked at emergency department presentations, unplanned admissions, potentially preventable admissions and time spent in hospital.
National data compiled by researchers from Flinders University and the University of South Australia included people aged 65 and over from across Australia, with 203,278 individuals living in residential aged care facilities and 118,999 receiving home care packages in the community.
People who used home care packages spent 7,745 days in hospital per 1,000 individuals, compared to 3,049 days for people living in residential aged care facilities.
Home care recipients accounted for 43% of emergency department presentations, 40% of unplanned hospitalizations, and 12% of preventable hospitalizations.
This contrasts with 38%, 33% and 8% in the same categories for aged care residents.
Unplanned hospital admissions and emergency room admissions are burdensome to both patients and the healthcare system.
One of the main reasons why home care package recipients are staying longer in hospital may be that, due to the condition that hospitalized them, they have had to move out of their private home and into an aged care home.
This may involve waiting for a suitable location to become available. In the meantime, the patient would continue to be hospitalized.
