Quality problems have long plagued the nursing home industry. While two-thirds of U.S. nursing homes are investor-owned, few studies have examined the impact of investor-ownership on the quality of care. The authors analyzed 1998 data from inspections of 13,693 nursing facilities representing virtually all U.S. nursing homes. They grouped deficiency citations issued by inspectors into three cat...

OBJECTIVES to determine the environmental quality of community-based residential and nursing care for people with dementia. DESIGN survey of a stratified random sample of care homes. SETTINGS forty-six registered residential and nursing homes in a single health district. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES scales for the assessment of environments for people with dementia, including care practices, soc...

BACKGROUND It is unclear whether high-quality health care institutions are less likely to be sued for negligence than their low-performing counterparts. METHODS We linked information on tort claims brought against 1465 nursing homes between 1998 and 2006 to 10 indicators of nursing home quality drawn from two U.S. national data sets: the Online Survey, Certification, and Reporting system and ...

BACKGROUND End-of-life care in dementia in nursing homes is often found to be suboptimal. The Feedback on End-of-Life care in dementia (FOLlow-up) project tests the effectiveness of audit- and feedback to improve the quality of end-of-life care in dementia. METHODS/DESIGN Nursing homes systematically invite the family after death of a resident with dementia to provide feedback using the End-o...

OBJECTIVE To describe the quality of care for chronic diseases among older people in care homes (nursing and residential) compared with the community in a pay for performance system. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of The Health Improvement Network (THIN), a large primary care database. SETTING 326 English and Welsh general practices, 2008-9. PARTICIPANTS 10,387 residents of care homes and ...

Background. Direct observation of care is an important data source for nursing home (NH) quality assessment, especially in light of evidence that chart information is inaccurate or incomplete for many daily care areas. The purpose of this study was to describe a standardized feeding assistance observational protocol that is designed for routine use by external (survey teams) and internal (licen...

UNLABELLED In 2005 through 2008, a small rural mountain valley community engaged in a woodstove changeout program to address concerns of poor ambient air quality. During this program, we assessed changes to indoor air quality before and after the introduction of a new, lower emission woodstove. We previously reported a >70% reduction in indoor PM(2.5) concentrations in homes following the insta...