Ten-Year Trends and Predictors of Unplanned Hospitalisation in Community-Dwelling Older People Receiving Home-Based Care

Table 3

Characteristics of the care needs and client diagnoses in 170,001 episodes of home-based care, by discharge type, 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2015.

Home care requirement or client diagnoses information	Unplanned hospitalisation		Planned discharge		Total
	n	%	n	%	n	%
Number of episodes	43,608	26	126,393	74	170,001	100
Number of unique clients	27,985		81,016		94,200
Total hours of home care contact time, median (IQR)	14.5 (31.3)		5.43 (8.53)		6.74 (12.59)
Source of referral for home-based care
Hospital	19,039	44	56,276	44	75,315	44.3
Individuals	5,617	13	14,751	12	20,368	12
Subacute care	7,422	17	20,297	16	27,719	16.3
Doctor	4,837	11	13,309	10	18,146	10.7
Others	6,693	15	21,760	17	28,453	16.7
Missing	0	0	0	0	0	0
Carer requirement/availability
Carer not required	7,302	17	32,026	25	39,328	23
No carer (carer required)	10,803	25	23,118	18	33,921	20
Has informal carer	22,082	51	50,112	40	72,194	42
Missing	3,421	8	21137	17	24,558	14
Number of diagnoses, median (IQR)	5 (3)		4 (3)		5 (3)
Charlson Comorbidity Index, median (IQR)	1 (2)		1 (1)		1 (1)
Presence of cognitive dysfunction	6,333	14	14,036	11	20,369	12

(Wilcoxon rank sum test); (chi-square test for independent samples).