INCORPORATING TECHNOLOGY INTO LONG TERM CARE

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

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Abstract

There are over 7 million disabled older persons in the United States, and this number is projected to increase in the future. How this population of disabled persons is to be cared for with maximum independence, and at what cost, is one of the major health care issues facing the country. This study addresses one of the most important but unstudied sources of long-term care for this group: self-care through the use of assistive devices or home modifications. Self-care activities are one of the most common ways in which the elderly accommodate their disabilities: more than 75 percent use some kind of assistive devices and 31 percent have modified their home environment to meet personal care needs. Most research on long-term care in the community has focused narrowly on two questions: first, which family members will be chosen as informal caregivers, and second, how formal care services are used to replace or augment informal care. We have little information about how disabled persons combine assistive technologies with personal care, and we know almost nothing about factors that facilitate the adoption of assistive technology in community-based long-term care, whether technology can substitute for caregivers time, and the potential effects of technology use on the well being of disabled elderly. The goal of the proposed project is to provide the first directly focused, comprehensive study of the use of assistive technology in a community based long-term care for older disabled persons. The proposed project will analyze the 1994-95 National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplement, Phase 2 (NHIS-D2) and the Second Longitudinal Study on Aging (LSOA-II) to answer the following questions: I. How is assistive technology combined with personal care to meet the functional needs of disabled individuals in the community? II. What factors facilitate the use of assistive technology as part of a long-term care arrangement? III. To what extent does assistive technology substitute for or augment the use of personal long-term care services? IV. Does the use of assistive technology in community- based long-term care affect the well being of disabled individuals, both by reducing disability, and by forestalling disability decline, mortality, and institutionalization?