Defining Home care: An exploration of its roles, challenges, and data needs

Home care (or home health care) makes a critical contribution to the care of older people, yet many people have little experience or knowledge of this service, and its component parts. Many older adults receive home care, but the nature of the support varies from country to country. This Forum Article considers how home care is defined, its scope and purpose and how services are shaped by the systems in which they operate. Systematic data collection in home care services already exists in some countries, while in many others, such as the UK, it is being planned. Defining data requirements for home care is critical to evaluation of care quality and cross-country comparisons. Data have the potential to play an important role in shaping perceptions of home care. For information to be useful, we require a shared understanding of what constitutes home care, what people want and need from a service and which data should be captured.