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November 15, 2007

Brown gets $10M for long-term care research database

PROVIDENCE -- A Brown University center has gotten a five-year, $10-million grant to create the first national database that will let researchers study how state policies and market forces affect quality of long-term care, such as by nursing homes.

The university's Center for Gerontology and Health Care received the grant from the National Institute on Aging, a university news release said this afternoon.

Vincent Mor, department of community health chairman at Brown, and his team will take existing federal information on Medicare reimbursement claims, patient hospitalization rates and other data and combine it with new information the team will gather on the health of residents, reimbursement rates for long-term care services, the organization of those services, and more from a random sample of 2,600 American nursing homes. The group will also collect information on policies from the 50 states.

More than 1.4 million Americans live in nursing homes and by 2020, an estimated 12 million will need long-term care, whether in a nursing home, assisted living facility, chronic care hospital or at home, according to the release.

The goal, according to the press release, of the database is to "allow researchers to trace a clear relationship among state policies, local market forces and the quality of long-term care. Policy-makers can then use the information to craft state and local guidelines that promote high-quality, cost-effective, equitable care for older Americans."

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 5:44 PM | Permalink

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