Pressure Ulcers Among Newly Admitted Nursing Home Residents: Measuring the Impact of Transferring From Hospital

Pressure ulcers (PUs) are reported more often among newly admitted nursing home (NH) residents who transfer from hospital versus community. We examine for whom this increased risk is greatest, further defining hospitalized patients most in need of better PU preventive care.

Retrospective observational cohort study.

All NH residents (N=5617) newly admitted between April 1, 2008 and March 31, 2012 in Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

RAI-MDS 2.0 data were linked to administrative health care use files capturing each person's NH admission date, their presence of a PU at this time, whether they transferred into NH from hospital or community, and their PU susceptibility (eg, amount of help needed to maneuver in bed or to transfer from one surface to another, frequency of incontinence, presence of diabetes, amount of food consistently left uneaten). Log-binomial regression with interaction terms was used to analyze data.

67.6% of our cohort transferred into a NH directly from hospital; 9.2% of these residents were reported to have a stage 1+ PU on NH admission versus 2.6% of those who transferred from community. From regression models, transferring from hospital versus community was associated with increased PU risk equally across various subgroups of less and more susceptible residents.

Transferring from hospital versus community places both more and less susceptible newly admitted NH residents at increased PU risk. Using evidence-based preventive care practices is thus needed for all subgroups of hospital patients before NH use, to help reduce PU risk.