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Researcher Marilyn Rantz, left, developed a tool to help
measure the quality of care in nursing homes. Through numerous
aging-related research projects, she and other MU faculty
are improving the lives of thousands of elderly people in
Missouri and beyond. Rob Hill photo
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Know
Your
Nursing Home
By Christian Basi
The nursing home population is expected to
triple in the next few decades, and this significant growth in
the nation's senior-citizen population will require more people
to make important decisions regarding the health, safety and lifestyles
of aging family members. To help with this task, researchers at
the University of Missouri-Columbia have just finished extensive
testing and development of an instrument that provides a quick,
accurate evaluation of the quality of care in nursing homes.
The new Observable Indicators of Nursing Home
Care Quality Instrument (OIQ) is the result of a three-year study
funded by the National Institute
for Nursing Research of the National
Institutes of Heath and recently completed by Marilyn
Rantz, MU professor of nursing,
and a team of researchers. The OIQ contains 30 questions that
refer directly to an observable aspect of any nursing home. The
questions consider everything from care delivery and grooming
to odor and interpersonal communication. The tool is designed
to indicate the quality of care during a 30-minute inspection
of a nursing home.
“We have an instrument that will provide
researchers, surveyors and nursing home consumers with a fast,
accurate and reliable way to measure the quality of nursing home
care,” Rantz said. “Quality is fragile, staff turnover
and other problems can make a place a different facility within
weeks. This instrument is something that consumers can use on
a daily basis.”
Each item has a score ranging from one to
five that will fall into a below average, average or above average
category. The scores allow for the comparison of quality among
multiple nursing homes. Rantz said that the questionnaire's measure
of quality correlates to the measure of quality obtained through
state survey findings for the facilities in the study. The researchers
tested the instrument in 407 long-term care facilities in Missouri,
Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Excerpts of the OIQ and more information are
available at www.nursinghomehelp.org — a Web site maintained by the researchers to help consumers,
providers and other researchers. A consumer version of the OIQ
and a guide for selecting a nursing home for a loved one, The
New Nursing Homes: A 20-Minute Way to Find Great Long Term Care,
is available from Fairview Press at 1-800-544-8207 or www.fairviewpress.org and on-line book stores.
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Last Update:
July 2, 2009
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