Characteristics of Elderly Nursing Home Residents: Data From the 1995 National Nursing Home Survey

Advance Data 289.  Elderly nursing home residents were predominantly women, aged 75 years and over, white, non-Hispanic, and widowed according to a newly released report titled "Characteristics of Elderly Nursing Home Residents: Data From the 1995 National Nursing Home Survey." This report presents the sociodemographic characteristics, functional dependencies in the activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), dental status, primary admission diagnoses, types of services used, and source of payment of elderly nursing home residents. The data presented in this report were collected from the National Center for Health Statistics' 1995 National Nursing Home Survey. The survey sample consisted of current residents aged 65 years and over.

Data Highlights:

In 1995 an estimated 1.4 million elderly residents aged 65 years and over were living in a nursing home.

The average age of these elderly residents at the time of admission was 82 years, with women typically older (83 years) than men (80 years).

A significantly large portion of the elderly needed help in their ADL's and IADL's. The ADL that residents required assistance with most frequently was bathing or showering (96 percent). Approximately 86 percent of all elderly residents required assistance at least in on lADL.

For both elderly men and women, the most frequent primary admission diagnostic class was diseases of the circulatory system (27 percent).

Keywords: elderly nursing home residents, demographic characteristics, functional status, dental condition, primary diagnosis at admission, source of payment

This page last reviewed January 11, 2007