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.

States that set high staffing standards for elder care in nursing homes are the only ones that come close to having enough staff nurses to prevent serious safety violations, according to a new study by a professor in the UCSF School of Nursing.

Standard marketing and strategic planning practices can hurt patient care throughout a nursing home chain, but only if too much emphasis is placed on such administrative standards to the detriment of clinical and facility standards, a new study indicates.

Seniors who do not have children to help care for them are less likely to have to go into a nursing home if they live in a state that spends more on home- and community- based services, researchers have found.

Spousal refusal, an increasingly popular way for elderly couples to qualify for Medicaid coverage to avoid nursing-home costs, has been painted by critics as an abuse of public funds.