Using paid staff and/or volunteers, long-term care ombudsman programs are charged with resolving complaints and solving problems that affect elderly persons in a variety of long-term care settings. This paper reports the results of a content analysis of annual ombudsman program reports sent to the Administration on Aging from 49 states in 1990. We found substantial variation in the documented information at both state and local levels and recommend revising the reporting system.
Although the Older Americans Act requires all states to implement long-term care ombudsman programs, states vary in the utilization of paid staff and volunteers in program implementation. Aggregate data from multiple secondary sources are analyzed in this article to provide an overall picture of the relationship between staff mix (percentage of staff who are volunteers) and the handling of complaints in both nursing and board-and-care homes throughout the country. Although the validity of the data is dubious, staff mix is positively correlated with the volume of complaints reported by ombudsmen and negatively correlated (but not significantly) with complaint resolution. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.
In these two volumes, Jossey-Bass has given us two very different books whose foci are chronic illness. Corbin and Strauss present interviews with 60 couples struggling with chronic illness, and a theoretical format to look at the management of chronic illness at home. Koff uses his experience as a developer and administrator of coordinated care services and five model programs to describe the steps in developing and administering a program of coordinated services.Unending Work and Care continues the long tradition of Strauss, joined more recently by Corbin, of expanding our understanding of chronic illness.What makes this book different from other books concerned with the care of the chronically ill, according to the authors, is that it examines how chronic illness is managed at home, the impact of that management and the illness upon the patient and spouse, and how their domestic adjustments to the illness, in turn, affect its management.
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