Cho, E.

Aim: We investigated whether the presence and characteristics of a family caregiver affect the use of formal long-term care under the new Korean long-term care system.

Background: In July 2008, Korea introduced public long-term care insurance, a form of social insurance, in order to cope with the reality of the growing elderly population and the increasing demand for long-term care.

This study evaluated the association between presence and types of informal caregivers and the presence of depressive symptoms among older adults receiving formal home health care (HHC). A secondary analysis of data was conducted using a computerized patient care database, the Outcome and Assessment Information Set. Logistic regression analyses were used to examine the data of 8448 patients aged 65 years or older who had been admitted to an HHC agency from acute care hospitals between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2002. The outcome variable was the presence of depressive symptoms.