Facility Ownership and Resident Satisfaction with Assisted Living

Abstract

Although the majority of assisted living facilities operate as for-profit organizations and serve increasingly frail elderly populations, little is known about the impact of ownership on the quality of care in assisted living. This study examines the relationship between facility ownership and the quality of care in assisted living, using resident satisfaction as a quality indicator. The assessed aspects of satisfaction include health care, housekeeping, physical environment, relationships with staff, and social life/activities. The relationship of facility ownership to resident satisfaction is examined controlling for resident psychological well-being, functional ability, facility size, and staff resources. Data were collected in personal interviews with 156 residents, including 96 residents in eight for-profit facilities and 60 residents in five nonprofit facilities in Maryland. Residents in the sampled nonprofit facilities were more satisfied with assisted living than were residents in the for-profit facilities. In particular, residents in nonprofit facilities were more satisfied with health care, physical environment, and social life/activities in the facility. Better understanding of the relationship between facility ownership and resident satisfaction can help administrators create environments that maximize resident satisfaction in both nonprofit and for-profit facilities.     

Beyond the Family Metaphor: Facility Caregivers Remembering Their Families

Hands-on caregivers in long-term care facilities often describe their work as being “like family.” The literature has not sufficiently explained what like family means. This qualitative study analyzes the reports of 23 facility caregivers about what they found rewarding in their work. Six participants described how they remembered family members while on the job. They remembered family members they cared for or wanted to care for. Family members who had passed away were also remembered by 2 of the 6 participants. Remembering family members allowed participants to feel close to their loved ones and see their work as giving back.     

Multiple mobilities in Mexico’s fertility industry

ABSTRACT

How can we conceptualize travel in search of fertility treatment? While current research on transnational reproduction mostly conceptualizes mobility as horizontal movement from A to B, this article shows how horizontal mobilities converge, contradict, and are interdependent with other forms of mobility; namely vertical mobilities in terms of social upward and downward mobility, representational mobilities in form of imaginative geographies, and the actual embodied experiences of mobility. Based on ethnographic research on the reproductive tourism industry in Mexico, the article explores the multiplicity of mobilities that constitute transnational reproduction. The article evaluates how the concept of multiple mobilities contributes to the study of medical tourism from a critical mobilities’ perspective.     

TITE‐BOIN‐ET: Time‐to‐event Bayesian optimal interval design to accelerate dose‐finding based on both efficacy and toxicity outcomes

One of the primary purposes of an oncology dose‐finding trial is to identify an optimal dose (OD) that is both tolerable and has an indication of therapeutic benefit for subjects in subsequent clinical trials. In addition, it is quite important to accelerate early stage trials to shorten the entire period of drug development. However, it is often challenging to make adaptive decisions of dose escalation and de‐escalation in a timely manner because of the fast accrual rate, the difference of outcome evaluation periods for efficacy and toxicity and the late‐onset outcomes. To solve these issues, we propose the time‐to‐event Bayesian optimal interval design to accelerate dose‐finding based on cumulative and pending data of both efficacy and toxicity. The new design, named “TITE‐BOIN‐ET” design, is nonparametric and a model‐assisted design. Thus, it is robust, much simpler, and easier to implement in actual oncology dose‐finding trials compared with the model‐based approaches. These characteristics are quite useful from a practical point of view. A simulation study shows that the TITE‐BOIN‐ET design has advantages compared with the model‐based approaches in both the percentage of correct OD selection and the average number of patients allocated to the ODs across a variety of realistic settings. In addition, the TITE‐BOIN‐ET design significantly shortens the trial duration compared with the designs without sequential enrollment and therefore has the potential to accelerate early stage dose‐finding trials.     

Continuing Care Retirement Communities:

No abstract available for this article.     

Life Space Over the Life Span

Much of the literature in gerontology has focused on the objective paramters of age, and the narrow causal links between behavior and environment. This has reduced the multi-layered experience of aging to stage-specific taxonomies of a disengagement process which depict behavioral units and overt operational actions, or alternately a developmental-biological paradigm that presents aging as a progressive deterioration of physical and cognitive copmetence. A more wholistic and open perspective of 'topophilia', or i.e., the relations, perceptions, attitudes, values and world view that affectively bond people and place was chosen. An oral history interview method was selected where elderly informants were invited to trace their environmental biographies over their life span. In this way the investigators were able to treat their informants' place memories as experiential data and analyzed the content of their remembrances for significant and recurring themes about space and place. This approach yielded importance insights into fundamental life themes of autonomy, privacy, environmental mastery, and sense of place.     

电工学CAI系统实现中的主要技术及特点

从开发工具的选择利用、教学体系结构的建立以及交互的灵活性和系统的稳定性三方面介绍了电工学CAI系统实现中的主要技术。并从辅助练习、典型例题、实验演示和电子黑板等方面介绍了系统的主要特点。实践表明，该系统是符合电工学教学规律，特色鲜明的计算机辅助教学系统。     

三颗星的AGPS定位算法与实现

为了在弱信号情况下更有效地实现定位,对辅助全球定位系统(AGPS)中三颗星定位算法进行了研究。采用AGPS定位系统结构改善接收机捕获性能,AGPS系统通过通用无线分组业务(GPRS)服务提供定位辅助数据;当接收机只能捕获三颗卫星信号时,利用边界模糊处理技术进行伪距处理,构成3个方程,附加地球椭球方程,采用Gauss-Newton算法对方程组进行位置解算.最后根据实测数据分析初始高度不同时的位置解算结果,当高度差为10 m时,平均水平定位偏差小于16 m.算法运算量相当于传统定位算法的2/5。     

网络辅助大学英语自主学习的实证研究

根据在组织和实施盐城工学院大学外语教改试点过程中获取的具体数据资料，探讨了计算机网络辅助大学英语自主学习与提高本校实验群体的英语综合能力之间的关系。研究表明：作为对传统课堂教学模式的重要补充，计算机网络辅助英语教学有很多优势，有助于大学生英语综合能力的提高。     

衰落信道中二维扩频系统的抗单音干扰性能

针对二进制相移键控调制的二维扩频系统,分析了其抗单音干扰的性能。通过采用导引符号辅助相干解调进行信道估计的方法,给出了二维扩频系统在单音干扰环境中的误比特率分析结果,并对理论分析进行了仿真。仿真结果表明二者能够吻合及单音干扰对于系统性能的影响。