Effects of Home-based Physical Therapy on Functional Outcome of Disabled Elderly: the Experience of Miaoli County in Taiwan

[Purpose] In response to the increase of Taiwan's aging population, and to improve the daily living function and quality of life of the elderly, the government of Miaoli County has implemented a ten-year long-term care program providing home-based physical therapy services. The purpose of our study was to design an assessment form and analyze the effects of home-based physical therapy. [Subjects and Methods] Disabled elderly who received home-based physical therapy were identified, and therapists provided treatment and evaluated their functional improvement using the designed home-based assessment form. [Results] The results of our study show that the total correlation coefficient (r) of test-retest reliability was 0.89 and the internal consistency reliability had alpha Cronbach's a was 0.91. The test-retest reliability was high as assessed by the intraclass correlation, and the home-based assessment form was highly correlated with the Barthel Index. Among the 255 subjects (age: 76.88 +/- 9.69), 120 (47.1%) had cardiovascular diseases, and 108. (42.35%) had orthopedic diseases. Subjects received 4.54 +/- 2.35 treatments, and the score of the home-based assessment form was 53.6 +/- 23.8 before treatment, and 56.0 +/- 21.0 after treatment. [Conclusions] After a clinical test for disability, the home-based assessment is a suitable assessment of improvement of function ability. However, the number of subjects was too small and the treatment time was too short, and further investigation of this issue is still needed.