Miami Student

Issue date: 3/29/05 Section: Community

The past 10 years have seen changes in the residents of Ohio nursing homes, a recent report said. The report, entitled "A Review of Nursing Home Resident Characteristics," was published by Robert Applebaum and Shala Mehdizadeh of the Miami University Scripps Gerontology Center. In 2004 more than 14 percent of nursing home residents were less than 65 years of age; which is double the percentage from 1994. The average age for residents has dropped from 83 years of age to 79.4, the report states. Mehdizadeh, research director for the Ohio Long Term Care Project, which helped to fund the project, attributes the rise in younger nursing home residents to the increase in the need for short-term care. More residents under the age of 65 are entering nursing homes to recuperate and receive therapy after surgery, heart attacks and strokes, she said. The majority of these people stay in the home for only a short time. The number of long-term residents has remained the same. Over the past ten years the state of Ohio has cut in half the number of nursing home residents who do not meet the "level of care" requirements. "Level of care" refers to a number of criteria used to determine one's ability to care for him or herself. However, the 3,300 residents currently in nursing homes may be better suited to receive care by alternate means. A high proportion of these individuals suffer from some sort of mental illness and would be better off in a psychiatric facility, Applebaum said. Unfortunately, the current mental health system is not adequate to care for these patients, he said. The study also found that women continue to account for the majority of nursing home residents, constituting 70.9 percent of all residents last year. "If you look at the population, three-quarters of those over 80 are women," Mehdizadeh said. Traditionally women tend to marry older men, and after their husbands die, often no one is left to care for them, she said. Applebaum, director for the Scripps Gerontolgy Center as well as Ohio Long-Term Care Research Project, believes the aging baby-boomer generation will have a tremendous impact on the long-term care community and the country as a whole once they reach old age.Thirty-four million people are currently over the age of 65 in the United States, a number that will more than double to 73 million when the baby boomers reach this age."We always had aging individuals, now we have an aging nation," Applebaum said. "The current system of providing long-term care is unsustainable."

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