Outcomes of adverse events in home care are varied and multifactorial. This study tested a framework combining two health measures to identify home care recipients at higher risk of long-term care placement or death within one year. Both measures come from the Resident Assessment Instrument-Home Care (RAI-HC), a standardized comprehensive clinical assessment. Persons scoring high in the Method for Assigning Priority Levels (MAPLe) algorithm and Changes in Health, End-stage disease, Signs and Symptoms (CHESS) scale were at the greatest risk of placement or death and more than twice as likely to experience either outcome earlier than others. The target group was more likely to trigger mood, social relationship, and caregiver distress issues, suggesting mental health and psychosocial interventions might help in addition to medical care and/or personal support services. Home care agencies can use this framework to identify home care patients who may require a more intensive care coordinator approach.

The objective of this article is to understand coordination as it unfolds in case management practices in the context of integrated care networks devoted to frail elderly individuals. More specifically, we describe practical coordination processes. We conducted a qualitative exploratory study using an embedded case study design. Our study covers three health and social service centers in Québec. We noted that coordination produces convention in case management practices through a process of bringing together different types of compromise in home care situations where multidimensionality appears to be more or less important. We constructed four different types of compromise-producing convention with regard to coordination in case management practices: compromise at the interface, scheduling compromise, compromise of opportunity, and compromising change.