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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Health Serv.
Sec. Health Policy and Management
Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frhs.2025.1462806
The Effect of Family Doctor Contract Service on the Noncommunicable Disease Management of Elderly: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Provisionally accepted- 1 Nanjing No. 1 Hospital, Nanjing, China
- 2 Nanjing Jiangning Hospital, Nanjing, Liaoning Province, China
- 3 Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
Objective: The aim of this meta-analysis was to examine the effect of family doctor contract service in managing noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) among the elderly patients.Methods: Chinese and English articles published up to 15 July, 2022 were systematically searched. Related randomized controlled studies (RCTs) were extracted from seven databases, including PubMed, Coherence, Embase, Web of Science, CNKI, WAN FANG Data, WeiPu. All these studies had evaluated the effect of family doctor contract service on chronic disease management among the elderly. A meta-analysis using either random or fixed effects was conducted. Mean difference (MD) and risk ratio (RR) were used for the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, respectively.Results: We identified that 25 independent studies, involving 4046 elderly patients with chronic diseases throughout China, were eligible for meta-analysis. All the results from these RCTs indicated that family doctors could disseminate NCD knowledge to elderly patients, improve their disease management abilities (including drug compliance, healthy diet, regular exercise, non-smoking, and non-drinking), lower blood pressure and blood glucose levels, reduce BMI, and increase quality of life and patient satisfaction (P<0.05).3 Conclusion: Family doctor contract services could improve health management for elderly patients with NCDs, and should be promoted in China.
Keywords: 10; Tables: 2. 2 Family doctor contract service, Health management, noncommunicable diseases, the elderly, meta-analysis 4
Received: 06 Nov 2024; Accepted: 11 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wu, Fei, Lu, Zhu and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jing Zhu, Nanjing Jiangning Hospital, Nanjing, Liaoning Province, China
Dan Hu, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, Jiangsu Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.