New Report on End-of-Life Care in Nursing Homes

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released a report titled, “End-of-Life Care in Nursing Homes: 2004 National Nursing Home Survey.” The report summarizes services delivered to current nursing home residents assigned to a hospice unit or otherwise receiving services designated as hospice, palliative, or end of life care at the time of the 2004 National Nursing Home Survey (NNHS). 
In 2004, 2.5 percent of current nursing home residents in the United States were receiving end-of-life care. This percentage reflects an increase from 1.8 percent in 1999. Approximately 70 percent of residents receiving end-of-life care required assistance with all five activities of daily living, and a similar percentage were moderately to severely impaired in their ability to make decisions. More than 90 percent of residents receiving end-of-life care had at least one advance directive. While 40 percent were reported to have pain in the past seven days, approximately 75 percent had standing orders for pain management. The results of this study suggest that residents receiving end-of-life care in the nursing home consisted of a broad range of residents who differed in function, cognition, reported pain, and diagnoses, yet they appeared to have received similar end-of-life care.

The report can be found at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr009.pdf

The documentation and public use micro-data files for the 2004 NNHS may be downloaded at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nnhs.htm.