Approaching person-centered long-term care: The trajectories of intrinsic capacity and functional decline in Taiwan

Aim: To examine the longitudinal trajectory of intrinsic capacity over a 3-year period among long-term care recipients in Taiwan, its association with functional decline and the onset of severe dependency. Methods: A total of 9448 individuals aged ≥50 years utilizing home and community-based long-term care services with complete data from three separate evaluations in Taiwan were included in the study. We carried out a latent class linear mixed model to identify heterogeneous patterns of intrinsic capacity over time, a mixed-effects model to investigate their impact on activities of daily living and a Kaplan–Meier analysis to examine the onset year of severe dependency among different intrinsic capacity classes. Results: The results identified four classes sharing similar longitudinal the intrinsic capacity trajectories: “high-stable” (20.13%), “normal-stable” (40.58%), “sensory-dysfunction” (29.53%) and “all-dysfunction” (9.76%). Individuals with predisposing characteristics were associated with lower activities of daily living, with the exception of age and education level. In addition, the poor intrinsic capacity class (b from −16.94 to −6.61, P < 0.001) had a worse evolution in terms of activity of daily living scores, and was associated with an earlier onset of severe dependency in 2.5 years in the all-dysfunction class. Conclusions: Heterogeneous patterns of intrinsic capacity that delay further functional decline are promising markers of function trajectories for a person-centered care approach in long-term care services. Targeting the needs of intrinsic capacity groups to prevent functional decline offer insights into: (i) strengthening function-centered care modalities to delay severe dependency as individuals get older; and (ii) validating regular monitoring intrinsic capacity as an early warning system to achieve healthy aging. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2022; ••: ••–••.