The relationship between agency characteristics and quality of home care

This project assessed the relationship between home care quality indicators (HCQIs) and agency characteristics.

Twelve agencies completed a mailed survey on a variety of characteristics, including size of their caseload and for-profit (FP) status of contracted service providers. The HCQIs were derived from standardized assessments completed voluntarily for home care clients in Ontario and in Manitoba, Canada.

The average caseload was 121.3 clients per case manager, and over 40% of nursing, personal support and therapy providers were considered FP. For individual HCQIs, few correlations were statistically significant. An overall summary measure of quality was correlated with the size of the population served (r = -0.80; p < 0.05) and the number of clients per case manager (r = -0.56; p < 0.1).

These data represent unique information on home care quality and organizational characteristics in Canada. The question remains as to how best to use HCQI data to inform practice in an era of limited resources and increasing caseloads.