Organizational home care models across Europe: A cross sectional study

Decision makers are searching for models to redesign home care and to organize health care in a more sustainable way.

The aim of this study is to identify and characterize home care models within and across European countries by means of structural characteristics and care processes at the policy and the organization level.

At the policy level, variables that reflected variation in health care policy were included based on a literature review on the home care policy for older persons in six European countries: Belgium, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, and the Netherlands. At the organizational level, data on the structural characteristics and the care processes were collected from 36 home care organizations by means of a survey. Data were collected between 2013 and 2015 during the IBenC project.

An observational, cross sectional, quantitative design was used. The analyses consisted of a principal component analysis followed by a hierarchical cluster analysis.

Fifteen variables at the organizational level, spread across three components, explained 75.4% of the total variance. The three components made it possible to distribute home care organizations into six care models that differ on the level of patient-centered care delivery, the availability of specialized care professionals, and the level of monitoring care performance. Policy level variables did not contribute to distinguishing between home care models.

Six home care models were identified and characterized. These models can be used to describe best practices.