The Older Americans Resources and Services interview and the medically disabled elderly

To determine which dimensions of the Older Americans Resources and Services (OARS) would best predict the status of the medically disabled elderly, veteran inpatients, outpatients, and nonpatient volunteers were administered the multidimensional functional assessment portion of the OARS. To determine whether any of the OARS subscales would be related to age-related functional deficits in this population, serial learning and differential reaction time were also assessed in these three groups of participants. Inpatients showed significantly more impaired ratings on all five of the OARS subscales than the outpatients and nonpatients, while outpatients were more impaired than nonpatients on two of the subscales (mental health and activities of daily living). However, physical health and mental health were the only OARS subscales consistently related to serial learning and reaction time performance. These data provide information about the validity of the OARS when used to assess the medically disabled elderly, and suggest a profile of variables that may contribute to overall dysfunctioning in the medically disabled elderly person.