The geriatric assessment is a multidimensional, multidisciplinary assessment designed to evaluate an older person's functional ability, physical health, cognition and mental health, and socioenvironmental circumstances. It is usually initiated when the physician identifies a potential problem. Specific elements of physical health that are evaluated include nutrition, vision, hearing, fecal and ...

By the introduction of a public, mandatory program of Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) on April 1, 2000, Japan has moved towards a system of social care for the frail and elderly. The program covers care that is both home-based and institutional. Fifty percent of the insurance is financed from the general tax and the other fifty percent from the premiums of the insured. The eligibility process b...

The four main models of long-term care (LTC) for older people in Taiwan are institutional care, community and home-based care, live-in migrant care and family care. This study aims to examine the factors associated with the four above-mentioned LTC models, using the Andersen model as its framework for analysis. Data were from the 2005 National Taiwanese Health Interview Survey (n = 30,680), and...

Rainfall-induced landslides are a major threat in the hilly and gully regions of the Loess Plateau. Landslide mapping via field investigations is challenging and impractical in this complex region because of its numerous gullies. In this paper, an algorithm based on an object-oriented method (OOA) has been developed to recognize loess landslides by combining spectral, textural, and morphometric...

The cancer potency was estimated for fumonisin B1 using an expedited method. The dose-response data used in the analysis was generated by the National Toxicology Program ([NTP], 2001a; b) and summarized by Gold and colleagues (Gold & Zeiger, 1997; Gold, 2007) in the Carcinogenic Potency Database (CPDB). The expedited method represents the first level of a three-tiered risk assessment procedure ...

OBJECTIVES This article used a new data source to examine the issue of disability trends among elderly persons and examined the potential implications of these trends on future health and long-term care needs. METHODS We used the 1992-1996 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey to examine time trends in rates of activities of daily living and instrumental activities of daily living disability an...

BACKGROUND in Auckland, New Zealand in 1988, 7.7% of those aged over 65 years lived in licenced residential aged care. Age-specific rates approximately doubled for each 5-year age group after the age of 65 years. Even with changes in policies and market forces since 1988, population increases are forecast to drive large growth in demand. This study shows previously unrecognised 20-year trends i...

About one-quarter of all long-term care (LTC) residents are transferred to an emergency department (ED) every 6 months in Ontario, Canada. When residents are unable to describe their health issues, ED staff rely on LTC transfer reports to make informed decisions. However, transfer information gaps are common, and may contribute to unnecessary tests, unwanted treatments and longer ED length of s...

A rapid ageing population coupled with changes in family structure has brought about profound implications to social policy in China. Although the past decade has seen a steady increase in public funding to long-term care (LTC), the narrow financing base and vast population have created significant unmet demand, calling for reforms in financing. This paper focuses on the financing of institutio...

While the economic burden of simultaneously caring for young and old family members is widely recognized, it has yet to be accurately measured. Yet, such assessments are relevant both to public policies providing support to family caregivers and to private insurance markets for long-term care. This descriptive study presents a new method to address this problem: the construction of a crosswalk ...