The number of both nursing home beds and nursing home residents in the United States declined between 1999 and 2004, according to the recently released results of the National Nursing Home Survey: 2004 Overview.
The number of nursing home beds dropped by more than 10% from 1.9 million in 1999 to 1.7 million in 2004. Meanwhile, the number of nursing home residents fell by 6% from 1.6 million to 1.5 million according to the study, which was released Wednesday by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Here are other study findings: More facilities were both Medicare and Medicaid certified in 2004 (87.6%) than in 1999 (81.8%). Of the 936,000 persons providing nursing home care in 2004, the vast majority (roughly 600,800) were certified nursing assistants (CNAs). Slightly more than 88% of the residents of the nation’s 16,100 skilled nursing facilities are over the age of 65, 45.2% are over the age of 85, and 71.2% are female. Only 1.6% of the entire nursing home population received no assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs) while a slight majority—51.1%—required assistance in all five ADL categories.
The National Nursing Home Survey: 2004 Overview is the seventh in a series of periodic nursing home surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, Division of Healthcare Statistics. The full study is available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_13/sr13_167.pdf.
