[Current Status of Medical Care for Nursing Home Residents in Germany - Results of an Empirical Study]

Following recent studies revealing deficits in general and specialised medical care of nursing home residents in Germany, the discussion on the quality of medical care of residents in residential care facilities has intensified in the past years. As a result, political efforts have been undertaken to facilitate improvements in this context. We collected data on the health status and medical care of 778 residents from 8 nursing homes in order to investigate the current situation regarding medical care for nursing home residents in Germany. Most of them were multimorbid, taking several prescribed medications. Our results showed that about 91% of the residents had personal contact to general practitioners or internists quarterly and only 1.3% had no such contacts within a year. The frequency of contacts to other medical specialists was comparably low. For example, within a year, only 18.9% of the residents had contact to urologists; only 16.7% had contact to ophthalmologists; only 39.6% had contact to dentists and only 10.6% of the female residents had contact to gynaecologists. Despite the fact that many of the residents showed specific medical care needs, these rates were below the utilisation rates of older population groups not living in long-term care homes. This leads to the conclusion that previous efforts to optimise medical care in nursing homes were only partially successful. Well known deficits are still remaining. Considering potential consequences for residents, further and consequent actions are required to improve the general and specialised medical care in institutionalised long-term care.