The overall objective of this research was to analyze the effect of ownership status on 1) quality of care delivered, 2) the cost of nursing homes in the United States and 3) wages to Registered Nurses. The model developed here uses a two stage least squares technique to correct for observed endogeneity problems. Results show that a model which includes ownership classification interactively with all independent variables, performs better than a model which simply uses dummies to proxy for ownership status. Nonprofit homes were found to have higher direct patient care expenditures than profit homes. Non-profits were also found to have a more specialized nursing force. Both of these results suggest that non-profits may actually provide a higher quality of care than for profit enterprises. No support was found for the hypothesis that nonprofits have more philanthropic wage policies. / Graduation date: 1996

Thesis. 1975. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Matthew E. Farber. / M.C.P.

The purpose of the study was to develop a behavioral nursing intervention strategy for specific deficits in grooming performance of elders with dementia. A quasi-experimental two-group design using switching replications with removed intervention was employed. Three residents with severe cognitive impairments and three residents with mild cognitive impairments were chosen from a special dementia care unit of a long-term care facility. Three residents among six residents were randomly selected to receive the behavioral intervention early. Baseline and post-intervention assistance was provided by nurse aides. Each resident was asked to wash hands, brush teeth, wash face, and comb hair in a sequence. Ten intervention sessions were conducted by the trained intervener for two consecutive weeks. The intervention consisted systematic prompting and social reinforcement. A total of 21 sessions were collected in the morning using videotape recordings. Interobserver agreement for the instruments designed by the investigator was measured by the trained observers. Data were analyzed in two phases. First, the quantitative data were analyzed to determine the independent functional behaviors of individuals, and the change in the intensity of nursing effort associated with grooming of elders with dementia. Data were examined by individual graphic display throughout the three phases (baseline, nursing intervention, post-intervention). Second, the qualitative data were analyzed to determine the antecedents, consequences, and resident responses associated with grooming, the caregiver problem behaviors, and resident problem behaviors associated with grooming performance. The results show that the functional behaviors of even severely demented elders can be promoted, indicating the effectiveness of nursing care strategies on the ADL task of grooming. The data in this research suggest that maintaining or improving functional ability is possible with a behavioral nursing intervention, which was a highly structured and systematic approach that involved modifying the environmental and behavioral context, through strategies such as prompting and social reinforcement, when necessary. Furthermore, through the qualitative analysis, the functional relationships between antecedents, consequences, and behaviors of demented elders allowed the investigator to analyze the caregiver problem behaviors and resident behavior problems associated with grooming.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine nursing homes‟ compliance with state minimum nurse staffing standards and its relation to quality-of-care deficiencies. Specifically, this study, reviewing staffing standards from 50 states and the District of Columbia for the year 2007, proposes a unique algorithm to calculate the states‟ expected nurse staffing levels for individual nursing homes in order to investigate their compliance with the state nurse staffing standards. By using hierarchical linear modeling method, this study attempts to capture the impact of the staffing standards on actual nurse staffing levels under resource dependence perspectives. Path analysis using structural equation modeling was conducted to investigate both direct and indirect effects of the staffing standards on nurse staffing levels and quality-of-care deficiencies. The major findings were as follows: (1) nursing homes in states with higher state staffing standards for the categories of RN, LN, and total nurse were found to have higher RN, LN, and total staffing levels, respectively; (2) higher nurse staffing levels resulting from higher state staffing standards were significantly associated with better quality of care (less quality-of-care deficiencies cited) in nursing homes; and (3) state staffing standards were found to have much stronger contribution to nurse staffing levels than any other organizational or contextual factors while nurse staffing levels, particularly licensed staff, were found to have stronger contribution to quality-of-care deficiencies than any other organizational factors. The study findings suggest that if the goal is to increase nurse staffing levels for better quality, increasing the stringency of both federal and state nurse staffing standards would be the iv most effective way. However, the staffing standards first need technical changes to reduce their ambiguity and ensure their fairness. If the goal is to achieve better quality, merely increasing nurse staffing levels may not be effective since the variation of the quality-of-care deficiencies explained by exogenous variables was smaller than random variation 5%. If state Medicaid reimbursements can be utilized for financial incentives for better performing nursing homes, nursing homes may improve their productivity by efficiently managing organizational personnel or increasing job satisfaction among nursing practitioners. Lastly, longitudinal analysis, considering variation in length of state staffing policy implementations, is encouraged to investigate the long-term effects of state staffing standards on nurse staffing levels and quality of care.