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What is a Nursing Home?
A nursing home is an entity that provides skilled nursing care and rehabilitation services to people with illnesses, injuries or functional disabilities. Most facilities serve the elderly. However, some facilities provide services to younger individuals with special needs such as the developmentally disabled, mentally ill, and those requiring drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Nursing homes are generally stand alone facilities, but some are operated within a hospital or retirement community.
Nursing Home Services
The level of care provided by nursing homes has increased significantly over the past decade. Many homes now provide much of the nursing care that was previously provided in a hospital setting. As a result, most nursing homes now focus their attention on rehabilitation, so that their clients can return to their own homes as soon as possible.
A nursing home or skilled nursing facility (SNF), also known as a rest home, is a type of care of residents: it is a place of residence for people who require constant nursing care and have significant deficiencies with activities of daily living. Residents include the elderly and younger adults with physical disabilities. Adults 18 or older can stay in a skilled nursing facility to receive physical, occupational, and other rehabilitative therapies following an accident or illness.
**Consumer choices
Current trends are to provide people with significant needs for long term supports and services with a variety of living arrangements. Indeed, research in the U.S as a result of the Real Choice Systems Change Grants, shows that many people are able to return to their own homes in the community. Private nursing agencies may be able to provide live-in nurses to stay and work with patients in their own homes.
When considering living arrangements for those who are unable to live by themselves, it is important to carefully look at many nursing homes and assisted living facilities as well as retirement homes, keeping in mind the person's abilities to take care of themselves independently. While certainly not a residential option, many families choose to have their elderly loved one spend several hours per day at an adult daycare center.
Beginning in 2002, Medicare began hosting an online resource known as Nursing Home Compare (see the "External Links" section at the bottom of the page). The program is intended to foster quality improving competition between nursing homes. Informed consumer choice has long been missing from decisions regarding the placement of the elderly in need.
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