Facility ownership and mortality among older adults residing in care homes

Background and Objectives Nursing or care home characteristics may have a long-term impact on the residents’ mortality risks that has not been studied previously. The study’s main objective was to assess the association between facility ownership and long-term, all-cause mortality. Research Design and Methods . We conducted a mortality follow-up study on a cohort of 611 nursing-home residents in the city Madrid, Spain, from their 1998–1999 baseline interviews up to September 2013. Residents lived in three types of facilities: public, subsidized and private, which were also sub-classified according to size (number of beds). Residents’ information was collected by interviewing the residents themselves, their caregivers and facility physicians. We used time-to-event multivariable models and inverse probability weighting to estimate standardized mortality risk differences. Results After a 3728 person-year follow-up (median/maximum of 4.8/15.2 years), 519 participants had died. In fully-adjusted models, the standardized mortality risk difference at 5 years of follow-up between large-sized public facilities and medium-sized private facilities was 18.9% (95% confidence interval [CI]: −33.4 to −4.5%), with a median survival (95% CI) of 3.6 (0.5 to 6.8) additional years. The fully-standardized 5-year mortality difference (95% CIs) comparing for-profit private facilities with not-for-profit public institutions was −15.1% (−31.1% to 0.9%), and the fully-standardized median survival difference (95% CIs) was 3.0 (-1.7 to 7.7) years. Discussion and Implications These results are highly compatible with an effect on the long-term mortality risk for residents due to factors associated with the ownership of their facilities.