You could have a look at:

Quinn T: Emergency hospital admissions from care-homes: who, why and what happens? A cross-sectional study. Gerontology; 2011;57(2):115-20

PMID: 20484883

Look up the literature on functional decline during hospitalization. You'll find that it is common, and it contributes to more dependent discharge destinations. Ditto for hospital-induced delirium.

From my studies in the field of Gerontology, It was found that even though a person could be diagnosed with many older age problems home is often best. The familiar surroundings seem to extend the persons life a few more years, even if seen as being in a non improving declining state. Give me some time to look up the study and I will give the study source to you. The familiar setting if possible extends the persons life period.

Please see my publication 'Integrated approach to prevent functional decline in hospitalized elderly: the Prevention and Reactivation Care Program (PReCaP)' for some background information on this topic.

Aledeh,

Was just reading others posts on the topic. As Walter said, 'home is the best", but also depends on which country you are referring to. In India, if the elderly is taken to a retirement home, there is a lot of pshychological trauma that the person and family goes through. While on a project on gerontology, I had an opportunity to visit a retirement home in Switzerland, where the inmates were pretty sure that retirement home was where they were supposed to be at their age! It is not so in India.

1 suggested reference:

Aging Clin Exp Res 2011; 23: 309-315 [underscore the role of simple vital signs relevation towards patients admitted from Nursing Homes]

prof. Giuseppe Bellelli [[email protected]] is studying the "LACE index" [CMAJ. 2010 Apr 6;182(6):551-7. Epub 2010 Mar 1.] with more promising results than "Age Ageing. 2012 May 29. [Epub ahead of print] Predicting readmissions: poor performance of the LACE index in an older UK population. Cotter PE, Bhalla VK, Wallis SJ, Biram RW.": as far as I know, only publication in Italian by him, till now; he is studying adressing discharge for frail persons.

Mauro Colombo

Mauro Colombo, thanks for your response. If you happen to lay hands on any related material in English, please do let me know of it.

Regards

@ Radha Thevannoor : You are right! You see in the West, say in Switzerland, there is a complete cultural difference to that of say, India. In India, it might be very uncommon for seniors to be sent by their loved ones to the nursing homes. It might also be that the living system practised is the "bigger family" system, living together with all members of the family in the same suburbs. Therefore, the care of the aged, would be a combined efforts of all family members.

In Switzerland, family members may all be working and or living very far away from one another, or simply not having the time to take up the responsibility of nursing the aged.

Moreover, nursing facilities are there to take care of the seniors when they no longer are able to live alone at how, or when a family member caring for them at home is also getting older and tired. There is also the mobile home care that serve their clients in their living homes.

Thank you for your contribution.

See also Stark, A.J., Gutman, G.M. & McCashin, B. (1982) Acute care hospitalizations and long term care: an examination of transfers. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 30 (8), 509-515. Its an old article but the findings are still relevant.

If it is transfers to/from emergency wards you/other readers are most interested in consider attending an upcoming one-day workshop on the topic that will be held on Oct 18 in Vancouver Canada immediately before the annual conference of the Canadian Association on Gerontology. For details visit the CAG website www.cagacg.ca and click on pre-conference workshops.

@Terry Quinn: I just read the abstract of your article : Emergency hospital admissions from care-homes: who, why and what happens? A cross-sectional study. Gerontology.

It was a good one. I wonder if the trends are not limited to some geographical area, way and quality of living makes the living standard some how unique in some sense. But there may be a wide shift in variation of living standard, when compared with/to other geographical area.

Thanks for sharing your work!

@ Gloria Gutman: Stark, A.J., Gutman, G.M. & McCashin, B. (1982) Acute care hospitalizations and long term care: an examination of transfers. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 30 (8), 509-515. Its an old article but the findings are still relevant.

The relevance and or its applicability is much more important than how old the papers is, I presuppose.

Thanks so much.

@Walter Zuhosky : I look forward to reading from you soon. Thanks for your contribution!

http://consultgerirn.org/uploads/File/trythis/try_this_d12.pdf

http://consultgerirn.org/uploads/File/trythis/try_this_d12.pdf

Here is a new paper that has some very relevant information:

The Assessment of Services Promoting Independence and Recovery in Elders Trial (ASPIRE): a pre-planned meta-analysis of three independent randomised controlled trial evaluations of ageing in place initiatives in New Zealand (Parsons et al, Age and Ageing published online Aug 2012.

Hope that might help open up some new avenues of enquiry for you...

Atherton, thank you very much for your contribution, it is a beautiful one! Please permit me to attach a link of this paper here.

http://ageing.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/08/21/ageing.afs113.abstract

Thanks Nicky Atherton for your input