Korean J Fam Pract. 2018; 8(3): 386-390  https://doi.org/10.21215/kjfp.2018.8.3.386
Change in Hospital Using Pattern after Palliative Home Care Program
Kyung-Hwan Youn, Jung-Im Gwak*, Jae-Young Bang, Eun-Ju Lee
Department of Family Medicine, Anyang SAM Hospital, Anyang, Korea
Jung-Im Gwak
Tel: +82-31-467-9161, Fax: +82-31-449-0151
E-mail: euridiche@hanmail.net
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8874-0518
Received: May 11, 2017; Revised: June 27, 2017; Accepted: July 26, 2017; Published online: June 20, 2018.
© The Korean Academy of Family Medicine. All rights reserved.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background: The palliative home care pilot program was started in Korea in December 2015, to continue caring for patients with terminal cancer who had been discharged. In the past, palliative home care was offered by a visiting nurse, but a physician home visit was added to the new program. The present study examined the new program to assess whether patients’ hospital usage patterns had changed.
Methods: We examined 49 patients who had used the new program from March 2016 to 2017, and 71 patients who used the existing palliative home care program from February 2012 to November 2015 served as the control group. We analyzed the baseline hospital usage patterns of the patients by carrying out a chi-square test for the univariate data.
Results: The number of outpatient visits by patients did not decrease significantly (P=0.705); however, the number of outpatient visits by caregivers (P=0.000) and emergency room visits (P=0.068) decreased significantly. Meanwhile, the number of nurse’s home visits and patient’s survival time did not differ significantly between the two groups.
Conclusion: Hospital utilization among patients with terminal cancer can be reduced by providing palliative home care.
Keywords: Palliative Care; Hospice; Home Visit, Visiting Nurse
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