Patient Behavior, Care Needs, Personalized Community Resources of Both Institutionalized and Non-Institutionalized Alzheimer’s Patients

Abstract

Nursing homes are a phenomenon of the past two decades. Approximately 5% of the over sixty-five population are being cared for in a nursing home at any one time. Twenty percent of those over sixty-five will have spent sometime in a nursing home before they die. The cost of this nursing home care in 1979 was approximately 18 billion dollars (Crystal, 1982). The demented are estimated to occupy 50–70% of nursing home beds (Reisberg, 1981). Alzheimer’s type dementia accounts for at least 50% of all dementia’s. The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease is 15% of persons in their sixties and seventies and 50% of the persons over eighty (Bartol, 1979). Both the over 65 population and the over 80 population are expected to continue increasing into the early 2000’s (Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1977). Therefore, if percentages of afflicted and nursing home placement remain proportional, the numbers and cost of nursing home placement due to Alzheimer’s disease will be astronomical.