Home care the American way: an historical analysis

An historical inquiry, this study examines a 100 year tradition of home-based nursing care in the United States. Whether considering turn of the century origins or contemporary re-emergence, the continuities in organization and delivery of home-based care are apparent and striking. Most remarkable in the American saga of home-based care are our dependence on local definition of perceived need and appropriate response; the amount of individual ingenuity required to obtain care from an often confusing assortment of competitive, duplicative and fragmented home care services; and our reliance on public sentiment and devotion to individual freedom rather than more "rational" planning methods.