[Regional system for support of home care]

In order to meet the needs for medical care after discharge from hospital of serious or intractable neurological disease patients, in 1978, Shinrakuen Hospital in Niigata City launched the Continuing Medical Care Section providing home visit by doctors and periodical home nursing. In the article published in 1990 reporting the 13-year practice of this section, the author advocated the necessity of the across-the-board and continuing regional care system in support of homecare and proposed a desirable model. Since then, with the policy shift from hospital care to homecare facing the progress of aging society, various homecare services have been developed. The author opened in 1997 an organized clinic of internal and neurological medicine in Niigata City, and, on the basis of long term care insurance program founded in 2000, put into practice the homecare system of cooperation between the prefectural and municipal administration, medicine and nursing. In this article, based on her article in 1990, the author adds the report on the development of this regional care system and evaluates the efficacy of homecare supported by regional system in intractable neurological disease medical care.