The Impact of Home-Based Primary Care on Outcomes Among Older Adults in South Korea.

Objectives: Although Korea issued a law and developed benefits of National Health Insurance (NHI) to enable the provision of home-based primary care (HBPC) along with implementation of a pilot project for community care for older adults in August 2019, the outcomes of HBPC services were not surveyed in Korea. This study aimed to assess the outcomes of HBPC among older adults.

Design: Analyses were conducted using data from the National Health Insurance Service in connection with administrative survey data. Difference-in-differences analysis was performed using a generalized estimating equation and Cox proportional hazards model.

Setting And Participants: Overall, 538 older adults who used HBPC services in a pilot project for community care and 2059 propensity score-matched older individuals who did not use HBPC services in Korea were included.

Methods: The length of home stay, total costs of NHI, hospitalizations, and admission to long-term care (LTC) facilities were measured as outcomes, and the outcomes of the participants were compared to those of the control group.

Results: The findings indicated an increase of 8.3 days (95% CI 2.1-14.5) in the length of home stay and a reduction of US$1241 (95% CI -2342 to -139) in total costs of NHI among older adults who used HBPC services compared to the control group. The odds ratio for rates of hospitalization among older adults who utilized HBPC services was 0.77 (95% CI 0.60-0.98) and the hazard ratio for the admission of LTC facilities was 0.12 (95% CI 0.04-0.32) in comparison to the control group.

Conclusions And Implications: The HBPC intervention has resulted in an increased length of home stay and reduced total costs, hospitalizations, and admission to LTC facilities among Korean older adults. In the future, new HBPC models must be developed to provide interprofessional team-based HBPC services with a standardized protocol of service provision.