The ethics of home care: autonomy and accommodation.

The following report offers an initial exploration of home care and its distinctive ethical problems, particularly in the area of autonomy and allocation, and specifically with regard to the frail elderly...The principal source of the report was a...research project of The Hastings Center and the Division of Legal and Ethical Issues in Health Care at Montefiore Medical Center. This project was part of a...program in which the Retirement Research Foundation supported...research projects on the autonomy of the elderly in long term care... Additional material...comes from a Hastings Center project... This earlier project involved a comparative study of home care for the elderly and community-based care of the mentally ill. It provided an initial exploration of many of the ethical issues crucial to this report....