Determinants of transitory and permanent nursing home admissions

This article describes an analysis of data from the 1982-84 National Long-Term Care Demonstration Project to estimate the risks of any nursing home admission, a temporary or transitory admission, and a permanent admission. Using a multinomial logit model, the relative predictive power of several individual characteristics on nursing home use and admission type were evaluated. It was found that the cognitively impaired subgroup was at the greatest risk of entering a nursing home, especially on a permanent basis. The results also demonstrated that the combination of cognitive impairment and functional impairment further increased the risk of a nursing home admission, particularly a permanent one. Other subgroups that had high probabilities of experiencing a nursing home admission were whites, nonhomeowners, those living alone, and those with prior nursing home stays. The findings identified several aged subgroups that were at no greater risk of nursing home admission regardless of admission type: older persons who were unmarried, had a low income, had no assets, and those on Medicaid.