Methods
Surveys
The actual service delivery systems and financial status of
home-visit nursing agencies in Japan have been previously reported over a four-year period (2009-2012) [7-10]. In
these previous studies, we randomly selected roughly half
of all home-visit nursing agencies and analyzed their characteristics.
This method accompanies selection bias, as the
selected agencies were those that were willing to participate.
Therefore, we also used data from databases which
are updated annually by the national and prefectural governments.
By incorporating these resources, we could
more accurately determine the overall characteristics of
home-visit nursing agencies in Japan.