Recently nursing home abuse and the incidents of nursing home malpractice have promted the state governments to take serous actions to protect the rights of the elderly people residing in nursing homes. Today Connecticut Governor Rell signed a bill enhancing rights of Nursing Home residents. The law prohibits homes from requiring donations and gifts from Medicaid patients as a basis for admission or extended stay.

The demand for space in assisted-living facilities has continued to go up, despite a small decrease in 2007. In fact, the National Investment Center (NIC) for the Seniors Housing & Care Industry reported that occupancy rates rose slightly between the third and fourth quarters of 2008, from 83.9% to 89.4%.

MRSA is a major problem in nursing homes with one in four residents carrying the MRSA bacteria, a study by Queen’s University Belfast and Antrim Area Hospital has found.

Nursing homes serving primarily Hispanic residents provided poorer quality care compared to facilities whose patients were mostly white, according to Brown University research. Details were published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.

In recent years, private equity investors have increasingly targeted nursing homes as investment opportunities. Spurred by investigative reports and anecdotal evidence that these deals led to worsened quality of care, many companies have found themselves under increased federal scrutiny.

Dr Szu-Yao (Zoe) Wang, who recently completed her PhD with UQ's School of Nursing, found that in Taiwan, where the culture dictates that children should care for their parents, aged-care facilities are becoming more popular.

Antibiotics appear to be frequently prescribed to individuals with advanced dementia in nursing homes, especially in the two weeks before death, according to a report in the February 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is making news as a dangerous, sometimes fatal disease for hospital patients, and in recent cases, students. MRSA is also a major source of illness acquired in nursing homes, yet few studies have looked at how to prevent its spread among elderly residents, according to a new review.

Selectively restraining elderly residents and giving them fewer sleeping pills could significantly reduce falls, according to a survey of 21 nursing home units published in the January issue of Journal of Clinical Nursing.

Use of an energy-absorbing hip protector did not provide a protective effect against hip fracture for nursing home residents, adding to increasing evidence that hip protectors, as currently designed, are not effective for preventing hip fractures, according to a study in the July 25 issue of JAMA.

When medical residents work shorter hours, fewer patients are transferred to intensive care and there are not as many interventions by pharmacists to avoid errors in medication, according to a Yale School of Medicine study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

People with Alzheimer's disease experience an acceleration in the rate of cognitive decline after being placed in a nursing home according to a new study by the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center. The study, published in the June issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, finds that prior experience in adult day care may lessen this association.