Bibliometric analysis of scientific production indexed in MEDLINE, about hospital based home care services

Objective: A thematic and bibliometric analysis was done for the available scientific production about the home care services based in the hospital. Methods: Bibliometric analysis. Data was obtained from MEDLINE database using MeSH “Home Care Services, Hospital-Based” as Major Topic. Search date: July 2016. The study sample was calculated by estimating population parameters for an infinite population and the selection was a simple random without replacement. Results: A total of 386 references were analysed. The number of original articles was of 204 (52,85%), identifying 243 institutions, with an index of cooperation of 3,75±1,16 authors/article. English was the predominant language in 279 (72,28%) articles. The obsolescence was of 13 years according to the Burton-Kebler Index and the Price Index was of 14,40%. Bradford nucleon was constituted by 23 journals. The thematic classification determines a relevance of 70.73%. Conclusions: There was a high obsolescence and an anglophone orientation. Also, there was a weak relation between institutions and corporation index. Over the time there was an improvement of the access to the primary source, in line with the Open Access initiative. The production was collected in a high number of journals (in a very dispersed form). The thematic classification meets the studied issue