Follow-up study of an urban family medicine home visit program

A home visit program was established by a large urban family practice in an academic setting. At the program's inception, 198 patients were randomly assigned to either an experimental group, to be eligible for home visits, or a control group, to continue receiving only office-based care. Two years after this randomization, follow-up data were obtained on 194 of the 198 subjects to assess the program's effectiveness. Fifty-one of the subjects had died. There were an increased number of deaths in the experimental group (30 percent) compared with the control group (21 percent), although this difference was not statistically significant. No statistically significant differences were found between the remaining 143 experimental and control group patients in function or well-being. Patients in the experimental group had a significantly higher number of hospitalizations, although there was no difference in the number of days spent in the hospital. Although methodologic considerations limit the ability to draw policy conclusions from this follow-up study, this home visit program did not have a measurable sustained impact on health outcomes or utilization of health services.