Client transfers in long-term care: Five years' experience

This paper reports the home-facility and level of care changes, discharges, and deaths over a five-year period for 1,653 clients newly admitted in 1978 to a long-term care program in British Columbia, Canada. Five years after admission, of clients initially admitted to care at home (N = 1241), 34.3 per cent were still in the program (14.5 per cent unchanged; 6.7 per cent at home but at a higher level of care, and 11.7 per cent in facilities). Of the remainder, 38.9 per cent had died and 26.8 per cent had been discharged. Findings for those initially admitted to care in facilities (N = 412) are remarkably similar. After five years, 28.4 per cent of these clients were still in the program; 39.3 per cent had died. Moves from facility to home care were few (2.4 per cent). Despite their advanced age at admission (X̄ = 74.7, S.D. 14.6), one-third were still in the program five years later, some with status virtually unchanged.