Home care clients, providers and costs.

The goals of the study were to describe the clients of home care and their care providers; to determine the competencies required to provide their care; to determine the costs of the formal care providers per client diagnoses; and to determine the burden of care for a randomly selected sample of informal care providers. Forty-nine percent of the 773 clients who participated in the study were age 70 and older and 63% were female. Forty-one percent of clients lived with a spouse but 24% lived alone. The most frequent primary diagnoses (reason for admission to program) were arthritis, stroke, fractures and sepsis. Discipline experts determined the competencies required to provide the care. Variations in costs across the same diagnosis were related to the category of providers assigned and to the frequency of provision of care strategies. The constant dependency of the client was perceived as the greatest stressor for informal providers.