Purpose of the study: To examine the relationship between county-level Medicaid home- and community-based service (HCBS) waiver expenditures and the prevalence of low-care residents in Florida nursing homes (NHs). Design and Methods: The present study used a cross-sectional design. We combined two data sources: NH facility-level data (including…

Resource Utilization Groups III (RUG-III) is a case-mix system developed in the United States for categorization of nursing home residents and the financing of residential care services. In Hong Kong, RUG-III is based on several board groups of residents. The aim of this study was to examine the reliability and validity of the RUG-III in Hong Kong…

Purpose: Emphasis on consumer-centered care for frail and institutionalized older adults has increased the development and adaptation of surveys for this population. Conventional methods used to pretest survey items fail to investigate underlying sources of measurement error. However, the use of the cognitive interview (CI), a method for studying…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to discuss the benefits and limitations of, and considerations in, developing a typology of assisted living (AL). Design and Methods: We conducted a review and comparison of nine AL typologies drawn from the literature. Results: Typologies addressed matters related to the structure, process, population, and…

Purpose: Although the nursing facility transition literature is growing, little research has analyzed the characteristics of individuals so assisted or compared participants to those who remain institutionalized. This article describes an analytic method that researchers can apply to address these knowledge gaps, using the Arkansas Passages…

Michigan physicians (N=930) were asked whether they made nursing home visits and if not, why not. A typology was developed to differentiate among various physician types based on reasons given. Six physician types were found, each identified with a different policy lever that could be used to encourage them to treat nursing home patients. (Author)

Nurses in long-term care facilities indicated that about 30 percent of residents presented noise-making behavior. From descriptions, typology of noise-making was identified: purposeless and perseverative noise-making, noise-making in response to environment, noise-making to elicit response from environment, "chatterbox" noise-making,…

This study derives the economic costs of misclassification in nursing home patient classification systems. These costs are then used as weights to estimate the reliability of a functional assessment instrument. Results suggest that reliability must be redefined and remeasured with each substantively new application of an assessment instrument.…

Gathered essays from 53 elderly nursing home residents about the strongest meaning in their lives. Most reported family relationships as central, followed by pleasure, and then health. Analysis showed significant differences between residents' and younger adults' types of meaning. Residents did not reveal an absence of meaning in their lives. (RJM)

Under the current Medicaid reimbursement system in Minnesota for intermediate care facilities for the mentally retarded (ICFs/MR), payments are not targeted properly because there is no uniform assessment and resource use information to determine those clients for whom services are most costly to provide. A project was mandated by the state…