Additional staff alone may not ensure high-quality dementia care

A study found specialized training, an easy-to-navigate environment and staff stability ─ as well as adding staff ─ are necessary to ensure high-quality care for patients with dementia living in nursing homes. Published in the December 2023 issue of Health Services Research, the study is the first to compare increased staffing between nursing homes with a large percentage of residents with dementia and nursing homes with a small percentage of residents with dementia. While increased staffing improves outcomes in most cases for all patients, discrepancies between high- and low-dementia facilities remain. The authors conducted regression analyses on a national sample of nursing homes between 2017 and 2019, using multiple datasets. (Newswise release, 1/8/24)