Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The quality of long-term care received by nursing home residents remains a persistent concern for consumers and their families. Since the major 1987 nursing home reform act, continuous efforts have been made to establish a national system for assessing, monitoring, and publicly reporting nursing home quality. In November 2002, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid created a national report card with nursing home quality measures the Nursing Home Compare” web site. This web site was designed to routinely publish and update specific measures. Making long- term care facility performance data available to the public is expected to empower and stimulate quality improvements within facilities. Because positive health outcomes are enhanced by quality food and nutrition programs within long term care facilities there is a growing focus and importance placed on improving food intake for residents of long-term care. This correlational descriptive study was designed to explore nutritional quality in long term care. Specifically, the study focuses food and nutrition health deficiencies, long term quality measure of weight loss and the star ratings reported on the nursing home compare web site. The findings from Pearson R correlation analysis revealed that total number of nutrition/ food deficiencies was correlated to weight loss percentage. The star rating component variables of quality, staffing and survey ratings, were not found to be statistically significant to predict number of nutritional deficiencies. When comparing nutritional deficiencies to overall CMS star ratings no significance was found. Finally, in the analysis of facility bed size to long term residents who lose too much weight no significant correlation was found.

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