Incomplete Ascertainment of Mortality in a Nationally Representative Longitudinal Study of Community-Living Older Americans.

Background: In longitudinal studies of older persons, complete ascertainment of mortality is needed to minimize potential biases. To ascertain mortality in the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), investigators are advised to use its Sensitive files, which include month and year of death on most decedents who had not dropped out of the study. Because losses to follow-up are not insubstantial, ascertainment of mortality is likely incomplete.

Feasibility of In-Hospital Administration of a Tool to Predict Persistent Post-ICU Functional Impairment Among Older ICU Survivors: A Pilot Study.

Background: A recent international consensus conference called for the development of risk prediction models to identify ICU survivors at increased risk of each of the post-ICU syndrome domains. We previously developed and validated a risk prediction tool for functional impairment after ICU admission among older adults.

Research Question: In this pilot study, we assessed the feasibility of administering the risk prediction tool in the hospital to older adults who had just survived critical illness.

Exposure to School Racial Segregation and Late-Life Cognitive Outcomes.

Importance: Disparities in cognition, including dementia occurrence, persist between non-Hispanic Black (hereinafter, Black) and non-Hispanic White (hereinafter, White) older adults, and are possibly influenced by early educational differences stemming from structural racism. However, the association between school racial segregation and later-life cognition remains underexplored.

Objective: To investigate the association between childhood contextual exposure to school racial segregation and cognitive outcomes in later life.

Optimization of a Sterile Processing Department Using Lean Six Sigma Methodology, Staffing Enhancement, and Capital Investment.

Background: Many hospitals and surgery centers have focused improvement efforts on operating room inefficiencies. A common inefficiency is missing and unusable surgical instrumentation, which can result in case delays and decreased effectiveness. Lean Six Sigma methodology, a set of process improvement tools focused on the reduction of waste and variation, has been used to identify and correct root causes of missing and unusable instrumentation.

Neighborhood Disadvantage in a Nationally Representative Sample of Community-Living Older US Adults.

Importance: Although neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage has become the standard for evaluating contextual socioeconomic deprivation at the Census-block level, little is known about its prevalence or association with long-term mortality in nationally representative samples of older persons.

Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of neighborhood disadvantage among a nationally representative sample of community-living older adults; to identify how prevalence estimates differ based on relevant demographic, socioeconomic, geographic, clinical, and geriatric characteristics; and to evaluate the association between neighborhood disadvantage and all-cause mortality.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study analyzed linked data of community-living persons aged 65 years or older in the contiguous US participating in the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) from 2011 to 2021.