An evaluation of patient outcomes and cost-benefits associated with a home intravenous therapy program in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Home intravenous (IV) therapy programs are a growing community health initiative due to their safety, cost-effectiveness, and ability to facilitate earlier patient discharge. These programs provide nursing support for clients receiving antibiotic treatment at home and ongoing education for patients and caregivers. The Surrey Home IV program, launched two decades ago with 3–4 patients, expanded to approximately 505 patients by 2012 but had not been evaluated. This study aimed to assess the outcomes and cost benefits of the program through a retrospective chart review of 168 clients enrolled between January and December 2012. Data were analyzed statistically to evaluate outcomes. Findings indicated that socio-demographic factors (age, gender, caregiver support) were not significantly associated with readmissions or complications. Spousal caregivers facilitated quicker program acceptance by allowing earlier initiation of education. Longer hospital stays were associated with longer durations in the home IV program. Co-morbidities, diagnosis, or type of infection did not influence complications, readmissions, or program duration. Open wounds required an average of six weeks of IV therapy, while systemic infections needed 4–6 weeks. Cost analysis showed that a 40-day home IV program saved an estimated $8.147.160 compared to a hospital stay, demonstrating substantial savings for the health authority. The Surrey Home IV program has proven to be safe, cost-effective, and beneficial for patients, caregivers, and health systems. These findings highlight the value of supporting home IV therapy and patient self-care models to reduce healthcare costs while maintaining high-quality care. Keywords: Health authority, home intravenous therapy, morbidities, mortalities, nursing care
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".