Home Care Services for Older Adults
Summary
Home care services for older adults encompass a spectrum of health and social support delivered in the individual’s residence, aiming to maintain autonomy, enhance quality of life and delay or replace institutionalisation. Services include skilled nursing, rehabilitation therapies, personal care tasks, psychosocial support and assistive technologies. Provision models vary globally, ranging from publicly funded municipal schemes to private and charitable agencies, often supplemented by informal family caregivers. Recent shifts include integration of digital monitoring, personalised care planning and interprofessional collaboration to address complex comorbidities, polypharmacy and mobility limitations. Emphasis has grown on equity of access, workforce competence and regulatory frameworks to ensure safe, high-quality care. As populations age and healthcare systems face cost pressures, home care emerges as a vital component of sustainable long-term care, with demonstrated benefits in patient satisfaction, functional outcomes and potentially lower overall expenditure compared with prolonged hospitalisation or residential care.
Research from Nature Portfolio
No recent Nature Portfolio content available.
Home Care Services for Older Adults publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in home care services for older adults across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Activities of daily living (ADLs): Basic self-care tasks such as bathing, dressing, eating and toileting essential for independent living.
Cost-effectiveness analysis: A method comparing the costs and health outcomes of interventions to determine their value for money.
Informal care: Unpaid care provided by family members or friends to support an individual’s daily needs.
Polypharmacy: The concurrent use of multiple medications, often common among older adults, raising risks of adverse interactions.
References
- Challenges of home care: a qualitative study. BMC Nursing (2024).
- Exploring the knowledge and skills for effective family caregiving in elderly home care: a qualitative study. BMC Geriatrics (2024).
- The Cost-Effectiveness of Homecare Services for Adults and Older Adults: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2023).
About these summaries
This Nature Research Intelligence Topic summary is created with the cited references and a large language model. We take care to ground generated text with facts, and have systems in place to gain human feedback on the overall quality of the process in line with our AI principles. We strive to create accurate and useful summaries for people unfamiliar with the research topic and that supports this goal. These pages are a beta release and will be updated as we learn how best to help people gain value from a research topic summary.
Turn complex research questions into confident strategic decisions
When you're under pressure to set direction, justify investment, or understand your competitive position, you need more than raw data — you need trusted insights you can act on.
Benchmark your performance against global peers using robust, methodologically sound analysis.
Combine quantitative metrics with qualitative expert insight to uncover strengths, gaps and emerging opportunities.
Gain tailored, decision-ready recommendations aligned to your strategic priorities.
Talk to us to learn more about our data dashboards and bespoke strategy reports.
Grow research skills, confidence and careers with training built for every stage of the research lifecycle.
Developed with Nature Portfolio journal Editors and internationally renowned experts. Discover three ways to learn:
Self-paced, online courses in convenient bite-sized units, covering key skills across scientific writing, publishing, grant writing, data analysis, and more.
Expert trainer-led workshops with hands-on exercises and real-time feedback across core research skills, delivered via interactive group sessions.
Editor-led workshops combining core principles in writing and publishing, personalised 1:1 feedback from Nature Portfolio Editors and hands-on exercises.
Explore course catalogues and workshop agendas, enquire about the options or request institutional pricing.