The proportion of the United States (U.S.) population who will be older than age 65 is projected to increase from 13 to 20%, reaching 69.4 million individuals, by 2030. Projections indicate that as many as 3 million of these elderly persons (vs. today's 1.5 million) will need some formal type of costly institutionalized care by 2030. The poor quality of care in the nation's NHs has been widely addressed. The prevalence of malnutrition and dehydration has received substantial attention in the literature. Malnutrition and dehydration, if left untreated or undiagnosed, is associated with the following adverse outcomes: (1) unintentional, and in some cases life-threatening, weight loss; (2) greater rates of acute infections; (3) increased incidence of pressure ulcers; (4) higher rates of costly acute care hospitalization; (5) reduced functional status and, (6) in the most serious of circumstances, premature death. The primary goal of this proposal is to describe and analyze the prevalence of malnutrition and/or dehydration (measured by weight loss) for a sample of California nursing homes (NHs, n = approximately 1,600 NHs). The study will entail secondary analyses of facility, resident, financial and staffing-related variables that are available in nine databases maintained by (or derived from) four well-established state and federal programs. The target variables and the hypothesized relationships among the various independent and dependent variables are depicted in Figure 1 on page 9 of this proposal.
| Collier, Eric J; Harrington, Charlene (2005) Discharge planning, nursing home placement, and the Internet. Nurs Outlook 53:95-103 |
