Functional status assessment for community long-term care: preliminary observations.

The Community Long-Term Care (CLTC) program in South Carolina offers services to nursing home eligible persons that allow them to remain at home and receive help with activities of daily living. Variation in the ways potential clients are evaluated often produces inconsistent eligibility determinations. We developed a simple, objective assessment tool to complement CLTC evaluations.

Are measures employed in the assessment of balance useful for detecting differences among groups that vary by age and disease state?

Purpose: This study explored the usefulness of measures commonly employed in the examination of persons with balance impairment to discriminate between performances of young and older adults and older adults with and without neurological disease.

Methods: Eighteen young adults, 22 healthy older adults, 12 individuals with Parkinson disease, and 20 older adults with peripheral neuropathy were recruited from the community.Performances on the following measures were compared: Mini Mental State Exam, grip strength, timed chair rise, semitandem and tandem stance, Timed Up and Go (TUG), and Berg Balance Scale (BBS).