To the Editor: We wish to compliment Dr Susan D. Horn and colleagues on their clinical trial, ‘‘Beyond CMS quality measure adjustments: Identifying key resident and nursing home facility factors associated with quality measures.’’ Their summary of the controversies surrounding the quality care improvement efforts assist in paving the way for a clearer vision and methodology to positively impact...

BACKGROUND Polypharmacy and inappropriate drug use is associated with negative health outcomes among older people. Various interventions for improving drug treatment have been evaluated, but the majority of studies are limited by the use of surrogate outcomes or suboptimal design. Thus, the potential for clinically significant improvements from different interventions is still unclear. The main...

PURPOSE To determine the sensitivity and responsiveness of the Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS) and the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) to the effects of home healthcare nursing interventions. METHODS A quasi-experimental before-after study was conducted using a sample of 106 home healthcare participants referred to one of seven participating Midwest home healthcare agenci...

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The purpose of this study was to test the impact of Function-Focused Care for the Cognitively Impaired Intervention on nursing home residents with dementia and the nursing assistants who care for them. DESIGN AND METHODS This was a cluster-randomized controlled trial using repeated measures. A total of 103 cognitively impaired residents and 77 nursing assistants were recr...