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Current Resident vs Discharged Resident Data

Wed, 03/08/2006 - 8:07am — Karen Stevenson
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Summary: Why I used discharged resident data in these tables instead of the more commonly-used current resident data

Much of the data that has been used historically to estimate the average length of a nursing home stay is based on surveys of current nursing home residents where the surveyor asks how long each person in the nursing home has been there, but the computation of the average length of stay of residents that have been discharged is quite different.

The overall average length of stay computed from the 1999 Nursing Home Survey for CURRENT residents shows that an average length of stay of 901 days, which is 30 months or about 2.5 years. The average length of stay for DISCHARGED residents is 388 days, or just over 1 year.

I believe the average length of stay of CURRENT residents mis-states the average length of stay in two ways:

  1. People who stay less than a year are under-represented in the average (i.e. if one room in the nursing home has a resident who has been there less than one month, and that bed was occupied by 11 other people in the last year who also stayed there less than one month, it should count as more than a single 'one month' stay)
  2. Everyone who is counted is still a resident in the home. Their stays are not yet over, so the length of stay measured does not include the whole length of their stay, which won't be known until they die or are discharged.

Information on the length of stay of current nursing home residents is of most interest to nursing home operators, who can use it to predict turnover and income, but is not particularly useful if an individual is trying to predict how long they will be there.

The average length of stay of DISCHARGED residents is computed by calculating the actual length of stay for each resident discharged during the prior year. This data accurately measures the length of each resident's stay, since the stay is now complete. Since I am most interested in helping people plan for future nursing home use, I have used discharge data on this page and in the accompanying graphs.

What you can NOT tell from this data is whether someone will have more than one nursing home stay, a situation which is not unusual. Unfortunately, I know of no source that would help predict how many nursing home stays any one person might anticipate over time or what the accumulated length of those stays might be.

Summary: Why I used discharged resident data in these tables instead of the more commonly-used current resident data

Much of the data that has been used historically to estimate the average length of a nursing home stay is based on surveys of current nursing home residents where the surveyor asks how long each person in the nursing home has been there, but the computation of the average length of stay of residents that have been discharged is quite different.

The overall average length of stay computed from the 1999 Nursing Home Survey for CURRENT residents shows that an average length of stay of 901 days, which is 30 months or about 2.5 years. The average length of stay for DISCHARGED residents is 388 days, or just over 1 year.

I believe the average length of stay of CURRENT residents mis-states the average length of stay in two ways:

  1. People who stay less than a year are under-represented in the average (i.e. if one room in the nursing home has a resident who has been there less than one month, and that bed was occupied by 11 other people in the last year who also stayed there less than one month, it should count as more than a single 'one month' stay)
  2. Everyone who is counted is still a resident in the home. Their stays are not yet over, so the length of stay measured does not include the whole length of their stay, which won't be known until they die or are discharged.

Information on the length of stay of current nursing home residents is of most interest to nursing home operators, who can use it to predict turnover and income, but is not particularly useful if an individual is trying to predict how long they will be there.

The average length of stay of DISCHARGED residents is computed by calculating the actual length of stay for each resident discharged during the prior year. This data accurately measures the length of each resident's stay, since the stay is now complete. Since I am most interested in helping people plan for future nursing home use, I have used discharge data on this page and in the accompanying graphs.

What you can NOT tell from this data is whether someone will have more than one nursing home stay, a situation which is not unusual. Unfortunately, I know of no source that would help predict how many nursing home stays any one person might anticipate over time or what the accumulated length of those stays might be.