Table 1.

Variables and measures

CHARACTERISATION VARIABLES
1. Healthcare centre
2. Age
3. Patient and caregiver gender
4. Family relationship between patient and caregiver	1. Spouse/2. Son-Daughter/3. Brother-sister/4. Others
5. Home care delivery sub-programme which the subject belongs to	1. Immobilised patients/2. Patients recently discharged form hospital requiring home care/3. Terminally ill patients/4. Caregiver for any of these patients
6. Number of daily hours devoted to care by caregiver	< 1 hour/1–2 hours/3–5 hours/6–8 hours/10–20 hours/>20 hours (Thresholds from the Aged People Characteristics Study)
7. Patient and caregiver's health problems	Classification of health problems from the National Health Survey
8. Programme start and end dates
VARIABLES RELATED TO CLINICAL OUTCOMES AND QUALITY OF LIFE (DEPENDENTS):
1. Patient's functional capacity	Barthel and Lawton-Brody scales
2. Caregiver burden	Zarit test
3. Family role/function	APGAR family test
4. Cognitive function	Pfeiffer test
5. Quality of life	EUROQOL 5D
6. Satisfaction	SATISFAD, specific questionnaire validated for assessment of satisfaction with home care services [38]
7. Institutionalisation
8. Mortality
9. Management of therapeutic regimen	Nursing Outcomes Classification code 1813 [39]
VARIABLES RELATED TO USE AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES (DEPENDENTS)
1. Hospital admissions
2. A&E visits
3. home visits by nurse
4. social worker interventions
5. physiotherapy sessions
6. caregiver visits to healthcare centre
7. patient visits to healthcare centre