Review of recent research on elderly people in residential care and nursing homes, with specific reference to dependency

<p>This review is one of a series of papers prepared for the Department of Health to provide a critical review of recent research on elderly people in residential care and nursing homes. The objective of this paper is to review the existing stock of knowledge of elderly people in residential care and nursing homes, relating to: client dependency; other client characteristics, including reasons for admission, circumstances prior to admission, length of stay and appropriateness of placements; and dependency and costs. The discussion of these topics forms the main part of the paper, following a statement of the objectives of the research as a whole in the introduction, and a brief discussion of dependency classification and measurement. The paper includes illustrative tables of the characteristics of residents and patients obtained in a series of studies between 1970 and 1988, using equivalent questionnaires. These studies were undertaken by the Department of Health and Social Security, in 1970 and 1971; the PSSRU, in 1981; the PSSRU in collaboration with the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York, in 1986; and the Social Services Inspectorate of the Department of Health, in 1988.