What is it about?

We used data from over 4,000 individuals with a diagnosis of dementia and identified key patient factors that may influence the timing of need for transition to nursing home care, including a patient's age, living situation, mobility level, cognitive and psychiatric status, and daily functional abilities. To make this information useful for clinicians, the authors created an easy-to-use web tool that helps estimate an individual’s likelihood of needing care facility placement over time based upon these factors.

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Why is it important?

Many care partners and families struggle with deciding when a loved one with dementia may need to move into a nursing home or an assisted living facility. Not only this transition is costly for families, but often difficult to plan for in advance. This study developed a model to help predict how long a person with dementia may be able to stay with their family/care partners in their community before needing care facility placement.

Perspectives

While this tool provides individualized prediction estimates aligning with the principles of precision medicine, it has inherent limitations. One important limitation is that the model does not account for other contributing factors or alternative outcomes, such as other health-related factors, individual family resources, or need for graded assistance. It also cannot account for quality- or length- of life in individual cases. This means that although the tool/model can help estimate the likelihood of nursing home placement, it does not consider other possible patient-related trajectories that may influence care and long-term planning. Future models should try to incorporate these factors to offer more comprehensive, well-rounded information for clinicians and caregivers.

Hudaisa Fatima
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Longitudinal predictors of time to care facility placement in patients with dementia: A joint longitudinal and survival model approach., Practice Innovations, February 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pri0000276.
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