Author(s)

Thérèse Van Durme¹, Olivier Schmitz¹, Sophie Cès¹, Anne-Sophie Lambert¹, Jenny Billings², Sibyl Anthierens³, Maja Lopez-Hartmann³, Roy Remmen³, Johanna De Almeida Mello⁴, Anja Declercq⁴, Jean Macq¹

¹Institute of Health and Society, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium.
²Centre for Health Service Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
³Department of General Practice, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
⁴LUCAS, KULeuven, Leuven, Belgium.

Despite many attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of case management for frail older people, systematic reviews including experimental designs show inconsistent results. Starting from the view that case management is a complex intervention occurring in multilayered realities, we conducted a realist evaluation of case management in Belgium, where this type of intervention is new. Realist approaches are particularly well suited to evaluate complex interventions as they seek to investigate iteratively the literature and empirical data to uncover mid-range theories underpinning the intervention under study. As such, realist evaluations are works in progress which provide tools to describe how, why and for whom an intervention is supposed to work. In this paper, we describe two mid-range theories that can explain why case management can help frail older people to remain at home, through the lens of capacity and social support.

Realist Evaluation, Frail Older People, Case Management, Home Care

Van Durme, T. , Schmitz, O. , Cès, S. , Lambert, A. , Billings, J. , Anthierens, S. , Lopez-Hartmann, M. , Remmen, R. , Almeida Mello, J. , Declercq, A. and Macq, J. (2016) Why Is Case Management Effective? A Realist Evaluation of Case Management for Frail, Community-Dwelling Older People: Lessons Learned from Belgium. Open Journal of Nursing, 6, 863-880. doi: 10.4236/ojn.2016.610085.