The State of States' Assisted Living Websites: Information Available to Consumers

Does Assisted Living Provide Assistance And Promote Living?

Assisted living has promised assistance and quality of living to older adults for more than eighty years. It is the largest residential provider of long-term care in the United States, serving more than 918,000 older adults as of 2018. As assisted living has evolved, the needs of residents have become more challenging; staffing shortages have worsened; regulations have become complex; the need for consumer support, education, and advocacy has grown; and financing and accessibility have become insufficient. Together, these factors have limited the extent to which today's assisted living adequately provides assistance and promotes living, with negative consequences for aging in place and well-being. This Commentary provides recommendations in four areas to help assisted living meet its promise: workforce; regulations and government; consumer needs and roles; and financing and accessibility. Policies that may be helpful include those that would increase staffing and boost wages and training; establish staffing standards with appropriate skill mix; promulgate state regulations that enable greater use of third-party services; encourage uniform data reporting; provide funds supporting family involvement; make community disclosure statements more accessible; and offer owners and operators incentives to facilitate access for consumers with fewer resources. Attention to these and other recommendations may help assisted living live up to its name.

Evaluating a Public Health Information Service According to Users' Socioeconomic Position and Health Status: Protocol for a Cross-Sectional Study

BACKGROUND

The increasing use of information technology in the field of health is supposed to promote users' empowerment but can also reinforce social inequalities. Some health authorities in various countries have developed mechanisms to offer accurate and relevant information to health care system users, often through health websites. However, the evaluation of these sociotechnical tools is inadequate, particularly with respect to differences and inequalities in use by social groups.

OBJECTIVE

Our study aims to evaluate the access, understanding, appraisal, and use of the French website Santé.fr by users according to their socioeconomic position and perceived health status.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study involves the entire French population to which Santé.fr is offered. Data will be collected through mixed methods, including a web-based questionnaire for quantitative data and interviews and focus groups for qualitative data. Collected data will cover users' access, understanding, appraisal, and use of Santé.fr, as well as sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics, health status, and digital health literacy. A validation of the dimensions of access, understanding, appraisal, and use of Santé.fr will be conducted, followed by principal component analysis and ascendant hierarchical classification based on the 2 main components of principal component analysis to characterize homogeneous users' profiles. Regression models will be used to investigate the relationships between each dimension and socioeconomic position and health status variables. NVivo 11 software (Lumivero) will be used to categorize interviewees' comments into preidentified themes or themes emerging from the discourse and compare them with the comments of various types of interviewees to understand the factors influencing people's access, understanding, appraisal, and use of Santé.fr.

RESULTS

Recruitment is scheduled to begin in January 2024 and will conclude when the required number of participants is reached. Data collection is expected to be finalized approximately 7 months after recruitment, with the final data analysis programmed to be completed around December 2024.

CONCLUSIONS

This study would be the first in France and in Europe to evaluate a public health information service, in this case the Santé.fr website (the official website of the French Ministry of Health), according to users' socioeconomic position and health status. The study could discover issues related to inequalities in access to, and the use of, digital technologies for obtaining health information on the internet. Given that access to health information on the internet is crucial for health decision-making and empowerment, inequalities in access may have subsequent consequences on health inequalities among social categories. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all social categories have access to Santé.fr.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

PRR1-10.2196/51123.

Online Customer Reviews of Assisted Living Communities: Association with Community, County, and State Factors

OBJECTIVES

Online reviews provided by users of assisted living communities may offer a unique source of heretofore unexamined data. We explored online reviews as a possible source of information about these communities and examined the association between the reviews and aspects of state regulations, while controlling for assisted living, county, and state market-level factors.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional, observational study.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Sample included 149,265 reviews for 8828 communities.

METHODS

Primary (eg, state regulations) and secondary (eg, Medicare Beneficiary Summary Files) data were used. County-level factors were derived from the Area Health Resource Files, and state-level factors from the integrated Public Use Microdata series. Information on state regulations was obtained from a previously compiled regulatory dataset. Average assisted living rating score, calculated as the mean of posted online reviews, was the outcome of interest, with a higher score indicating a more positive review. We used word cloud to visualize how often words appeared in 1-star and 5-star reviews. Logistic regression models were used to determine the association between online rating and a set of community, county, and state variables. Models were weighted by the number of reviews per assisted living bed.

RESULTS

Overall, 76% of communities had online reviews. We found lower odds of positive reviews in communities with greater proportions of Medicare/Medicaid residents [odds ratio (OR) = 0.986; P < .001], whereas communities located in micropolitan areas (compared with urban), and those in states with more direct care worker hours (per week per bed) had greater odds of high rating (OR = 1.722; P < .001 and OR = 1.018, P < .05, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Online reviews are increasingly common, including in long-term care. These reviews are a promising source of information about important aspects of satisfaction, particularly in care settings that lack a public reporting infrastructure. We found several significant associations between online ratings and community-level factors, suggesting these reviews may be a valuable source of information to consumers and policy makers.

What information about choosing a nursing home is available on YouTube?

This study aimed to identify YouTube videos focused on choosing a nursing home. The contents of the videos were analyzed using 19 items from the guidelines proposed by the Donabedian model. An analysis of 57 videos showed that informal presentations for format (54.39%), laypersons for speaker (36.84%), and personal channel for uploader (61.40%) exhibited the highest frequency. According to the analysis of video content, most videos included the environment (49.12%), programs (38.63%), and cost (35.09%). However, fewer videos focused on care protocols (5.26%), participation (5.26%) and health outcomes (5.26%). More informal presentations, laypersons, and personal channels than health providers, professional groups, and mass media were included in videos focused on choosing nursing homes. It is necessary to provide information regarding the philosophy, care, and health outcomes of residents in addition to the information regarding environment and cost provided by reliable suppliers, such as health professionals, the government, and mass media.

Promoting Quality of Life and Safety in Assisted Living: A Survey of State Monitoring and Enforcement Agents

Our goal was to learn about monitoring and enforcement of state assisted living (AL) regulations. Using survey responses provided in 2019 from administrative agents across 48 states, we described state agency structures, accounted for operational processes concerning monitoring and enforcement, and documented data collecting and public reporting efforts. In half of the states, oversight of AL was dispersed across three or more agencies, and administrative support varied in terms of staffing and budget allocations. Operations also varied. While most agents could deploy a range of monitoring and enforcement tools, less than half compiled data concerning inspections, violations, and penalties. Less than 10 states shared such information in a manner that was easily accessible to the public. Future research should determine how these varied administrative structures and processes deter or contribute to AL communities' efforts to implement regulations designed to promote quality of life and provide for the safety of residents.

Prevalence and persistency of deficiency citations in Florida assisted living facilities

BACKGROUND

Assisted living facilities (ALFs) are plagued with quality issues but there are limited studies on the quality of ALFs. In Florida, state surveyors conduct inspections of ALFs and cite and/or fine facilities that are in violation of regulations. Yet, we do not know the types of quality problems identified and the extent to which facilities repeat such problems. In this study, we begin to fill this gap in our understanding of ALFs quality by summarizing the deficiency citations in Florida ALFs.

METHODS

We obtained inspection citation data on 957 large ALFs (bed size ≥ 25) in Florida from 2012 to 2018. Citation data are summarized at the facility-year level and classified into different groups such as resident care, admissions, medication, staffing, and training. We examined the trends in citations over time and stratified citations by profit status, license type, and facility size. We also assessed repeat citations among the ALFs.

RESULTS

Of the 957 large ALFs operating in Florida, 87% of the facilities were cited one or more times from 2012 to 2018. In 2018, the most common citations were related to medications (26.2%), resident care (25.3%), training (25.3%), admissions (21.1%), and staffing (20.8%). For-profit facilities, facilities with beds over 100, and facilities with limited mental health license tended to be cited more often across most types of deficiencies. Repeat citations are common with over 40% of facilities cited in two or more years for resident care and medication from 2012 to 2018.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that repeat citations are common and ALFs do not improve quality on a long-term basis after citations. If we want to improve ALFs quality, we may need to provide appropriate incentives and resources to ALFs along with stringent enforcement of regulations.

The Unique Challenges Faced by Assisted Living Communities to Meet Federal Guidelines for COVID-19

This perspective addresses the challenges that assisted living (AL) providers face concerning federal guidelines to prevent increased spread of COVID-19. These challenges include restriction of family visitation, use of third-party providers as essential workers, staffing guidelines, transfer policies, and rural AL hospitalizations. To meet these challenges we recommend that AL providers incorporate digital technology to maintain family-resident communication. We also recommend that states adopt protocols that limit the number of AL communities visited by home health care workers in a 14-day period, appeal to the federal government for hazard pay for direct care workers, and to extend the personal care attendant program to AL. It is further recommended that states work with AL communities to implement COVID-19 comprehensive emergency management plans that are well-coordinated with local emergency operation centers to assist with transfers to COVID-19 specific locations and to assist in rural areas with hospital transfers. Together, these recommendations to AL providers and state and federal agencies address the unique structure and needs of AL and would enable AL communities to be better prepared to care for and reduce those infected with COVID-19.