Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 12, 1991                   TAG: 9103120172
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STUDY FINDS A NURSING HOME IN FUTURE OF MANY 65-YEAR-OLDS/ BY GINA KOLATA/ NE

And the longer they live the more likely it becomes that there is a nursing home in their future.

The study, published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine, relied on data on how many people have used nursing homes in the recent past to estimate future use.

Dr. Peter Kemper and Dr. Christopher M. Murtaugh of the Agency for Health Care Policy Research, an office of the Department of Health and Human Services based in Rockville, Md., who wrote the study, predicted that 43 percent of the people who turn 65 this year will eventually enter a nursing home.

And researchers of Alzheimer's disease say that half of all nursing home residents have Alzheimer's.

The report and an accompanying editorial suggest that health experts should reconsider the reliance on nursing homes. They say many nursing home residents could live independently with home care or other assistance.

The reliance on nursing homes may reflect more of an unquestioning reliance on the status quo than a medical or social necessity, Dr. Robert Kane and Dr. Rosalie A. Kane of the University of Minnesota wrote in the editorial.

In particular, they said, "payments for the housing and hotel functions of a nursing home should be financed separately from the personal care functions."

That would help people to get the personal care they need at home without necessarily enduring what the editorial called "the Procrustean nursing home model in which the resident is expected to adjust to the routines of the setting."

These are some additional findings in the study:

Nearly two-thirds of nursing home patients are women, reflecting the fact that women live longer than men.

Nine percent of the people who reached 65 last year will spend at least five years in a nursing home; 25 percent will spend at least a year in a nursing home.

Whites use nursing homes more than blacks.

Officials at the Health Care Financing Administration say they are experimenting with programs that can restructure the payments and services that old people receive, allowing more of them to have the option of staying home, with attendants providing health care.

In addition to improving the quality of life for old people, the programs may also save money, the health care agency said.