Rapid Cognitive Assessment of Nursing Home Residents: A Comparison of the Brief Interview for Mental Status (BIMS) and Brief Cognitive Assessment Tool-Short Form (BCAT-SF).

In nursing homes, the ability to identify residents with cognitive impairment is critical; however, many providers fail to address symptoms of dementia due to insufficient time to assess cognition. In the current study, the authors compared two rapidly administered instruments, the Brief Interview for Mental Status (BIMS) and Brief Cognitive Assessment Tool-Short Form (BCAT-SF), in predicting specific cognitive stages. Two hundred twenty-five nursing home residents who were referred for neurocognitive evaluation and met inclusion criteria participated in the study. Both cognitive instruments were found to predict cognitive diagnoses generally, but only the BCAT-SF demonstrated sensitivity in differentiating among all cognitive levels. Receiver operating characteristic analyses did not confirm cutoff scores reported in the original BIMS study. However, sensitivity (0.91) and specificity (0.96) values for the BCAT-SF were robust for differentiating between dementia and non-dementia. The BCAT-SF appears to be a more sensitive instrument for predicting cognitive stages than the BIMS for nursing home residents.