NEWS

Quality of home health care subject of new study

By JENNIFER NARDONE
UNC School of Nursing

CHAPEL HILL -- Dr. Mary Lynn, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, has been awarded a $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research for a four-year study on the quality of home health care.

Home health care is the fastest-growing segment of the U.S.’s health-care and service industries. Understanding how care delivered in the home affects patients’ health and wellness has not been previously quantified.

"We don’t really know what quality home health care is," said Lynn. "We need to better understand what goes on during the actual process of health care and whether or not it makes a difference."

More than 1,100 patients will be interviewed for the study, ranging from individuals who require home care for only a few weeks to those who rely on home care for as long as nine months.

Whether a patient can continue caring for himself or herself after the care provider is no longer working with the patient will be a key outcome indicator in the study. The major impact on that outcome, Lynn said, is the relationship between the provider and the patient.

To understand how that relationship affects long-term health care, participants will be interviewed immediately after release from the hospital, at the end of home care and a month after they have completed home care.

Patients will be asked about key aspects of their health, activities and abilities. A unique feature of this study will include patients’ individual assessments of the care they receive from their home care providers and evaluation of their interactions with the provider. Patients will be asked if their nurse "acted phony when working with them," and "acted as if he or she knew them as a person."

Data collection will begin in September 2002 and focus on home health-care patients and providers in the Triangle and eastern region of North Carolina.

More than 160 nurses will be interviewed for the project. The study also will use patient chart records and the statistical information from individual Outcome and Assessment Information Sets, federally required health records kept by home health-care nurses about their patients’ health.

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School of Nursing Contact: Sunny Smith Nelson at (919) 966-1412