The effect of long-term care environments on health outcomes

This study contrasts rates of mortality and of relocation to higher levels of care as well as trajectories of cognitive status, functional ability, de pression, and subjective health of residents of an assisted living facility with those of a nursing home. Data were collected from medical records and face-to-face interviews with 158 residents at baseline and 4, 8, and 12 mo nths later. All participants lived on a single long-term care campus. Logis tic regression revealed that facility was not a significant predictor of mo rtality or relocations due to declining health. A repeated measures analysi s of variance found that outcomes for people living in the two facilities d id not change at different rates. These consistent findings suggest that al though the assisted living and nursing home environments claim to have diff erent philosophies of care, health outcome patterns for people living in th e two environments were similar.