In addition, we performed our own FAX survey of
5,568 home-visit nursing agencies throughout Japan in
January 2014. We received responses from 3,042 agencies
(response rate: 54.6%). From those, we selected
2,904 agencies for the analysis; 109 agencies that lacked
an office number and 29 agencies that opened in
September 2012 or later were excluded. The research
group members then selected nine survey items regarding
the service delivery systems of the agencies which
were not addressed in the other two national public databases;
these items were: 1) services provided by the
agency; 2) types of office numbers; 3) owned by a hospital
or not; 4) days of operation including days of the
week and holiday operations; 5) home-visit nursing provisions
to ≥10 patients in a private nursing home and the ratio
of patients in private nursing homes to all patients;
6) the number of collaborating hospitals/care management
agencies; 7) the number of patients using long-term care/
medical insurance and the number of patients diagnosed
with terminal-stage cancer, psychiatric diseases, or intractable
diseases; 8) the number of patient deaths during 2012
including the place of the death and the number of deaths from cancer; and 9) financial performance of the agency
(profitable, balanced, unprofitable or unclear) [11].