Home visits benefit elderly people

In a meta-analysis Elkan and colleagues (p 719) have found that regular home visits to elderly people significantly reduced mortality and admissions to long term institutional care. Home visits have been proposed as a strategy to enable elderly people to remain living in their own homes. A review recently reported in this journal, however, concluded that preventive home visits were largely ineffective. There is at present little understanding of what works and why. Future studies must attempt to unravel the factors that make a successful programme of home visiting to older people.

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Relevant Article

Effectiveness of home based support for older people: systematic review and meta-analysis • Commentary: When, where, and why do preventive home visits work?

Ruth Elkan, Denise Kendrick, Michael Dewey, Michael Hewitt, Jane Robinson, Mitch Blair, Deb Williams, Kathy Brummell, and Matthias Egger
BMJ 2001 323: 719. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]