Trends in the Use of Residential Settings Among Older Adults.

Objectives: As the U.S. population ages, the prevalence of disability and functional limitations, and demand for long-term services and supports (LTSS), will increase.

How are States Measuring It?: National Survey Findings on State Access Monitoring Efforts for Fee-for-Service Medicaid Enrollees.

For many years, barriers to access have been a significant concern in the Medicaid program. In November 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a Final Rule that requires states to submit access monitoring plans every three years beginning in October 2016. State access monitoring plans must focus on five categories of service and three domains for measuring and monitoring access to care.

Users of Medicaid home and community-based services are especially vulnerable to costly avoidable hospital admissions.

Although Medicaid's coverage of home and community-based services and the program's capacity to provide such services have increased markedly in recent years, relatively little is known about the population that uses these services. We combined Medicaid and Medicare data to characterize the national Medicaid population of service users by key demographic and health-related attributes. We also assessed one important dimension of their health outcomes: potentially avoidable hospital admissions.

Strong Rural Communities Initiative (SRCI) program: challenges in promoting healthier lifestyles.

Background: The Strong Rural Communities Initiative (SRCI) was created to address the health needs of rural Wisconsin communities through a multifaceted partnership that included the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (UWSMPH), the Rural Health Development Council (RHDC), and hospitals, public health departments, and businesses in 6 rural communities in Wisconsin. The SRCI provided a broad framework of leadership to assist each of the 6 rural communities in developing and implementing new, collaborative interventions that addressed the specific health needs of the community.

Methods: Separate assessments were conducted for the communities that partnered with each respective medical school and focused on the processes of community collaboration and partnership function.

Challenges and approaches to the identification of traumatic brain injury among nursing home residents.

The Minimum Data Set (MDS) is a standardized, federally mandated assessment tool used to identify the needs of nursing home residents and rehabilitation and nursing services received on a routine basis. These data can be used to identify people with traumatic brain injury (TBI), where a diagnosis is recorded. However, both limitations of the MDS and the presence of other neurological issues that can be confused with TBI can reduce the likelihood that brain injury is identified where it exists.

Nursing home capabilities and decisions to hospitalize: a survey of medical directors and directors of nursing.

Objectives: To obtain information from decision makers about attitudes toward hospitalization and the factors that influence their decisions to hospitalize nursing home residents.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Setting: Four hundred forty-eight nursing homes, 76% of which were nonprofit, from 25 states.

ANA nurse sensitive quality indicators for long-term care facilities.

Nurse sensitive quality indicators, developed through the American Nurses Association's (ANA) Safety and Quality Initiative, are key to evaluating the quality of patient care in acute care settings. This study found that the ANA quality indicators were also relevant for long-term care facilities. Long-term care facilities can be part of the ANA Safety and Quality Initiative by collecting and reporting nurse sensitive quality indicators and submitting data to the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators.