기사
Complaints Against Nursing Homes: Comparing Two Sources of Complaint Information and Predictors of Complaints
- 개인저자
- Jennifer L. Troyer
- 수록페이지
- 516-529 p.
- 발행일자
- 2011.08.23
- 출판사
- The Gerontological Society of America
초록
Purpose of the Study: Two consumer-derived measures of nursing home quality that have been underutilized by researchers are consumer complaints to the state certification agency between inspections and complaints to the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program. This article describes these complaints, considers facility-level predictors of complaints, and examines how complaints to the 2 entities are related. Design and Methods: This article uses North Carolina complaint data from the state certification agency and Ombudsman from 2002 to 2006. First, we outline the similarities and differences in the 2 complaint sources by considering descriptive statistics and examining the structure of the 2 agencies. Second, we examine the relationship between complaints and facility characteristics that have been predictive of traditional quality measures. Finally, we examine the relationships between the 2 types of complaints. Results: We find that complaints to the 2 agencies exhibit distinct differences in substantiation rates, although the top complaint category for both agencies is quality of care. Having a higher proportion of Medicaid residents is generally not predictive of complaint volume, whereas having a higher proportion of Medicare residents is associated with higher complaint levels. Implications: We find a lack of association between complaints to the 2 agencies when examining specific matched categories of complaints in many cases, suggesting that the 2 entities are not duplicating efforts in these categories.