Does Person-Centered Care Improve Residents' Satisfaction With Nursing Home Quality?

Abstract

Objective: Person-centered care (PCC) is meant to enhance nursing home residents' quality of life (QOL). Including residents' perspectives is critical to determining whether PCC is meeting residents' needs and desires. This study examines whether PCC practices promote satisfaction with QOL and quality of care and services (QOC and QOS) among nursing home residents.

Design: A longitudinal, retrospective cohort study using an in-person survey.

Setting: Three hundred twenty nursing homes in Kansas enrolled or not enrolled in a pay-for-performance program, Promoting Excellent Alternatives in Kansas (PEAK 2.0), to promote PCC in nursing homes.

Participants: A total of 6214 nursing home residents in 2013-2014 and 5538 residents in 2014-2015, with a Brief Interview for Mental Status score ≥8, participated in face-to-face interviews. Results were aggregated to the nursing home level.

Measurements: My InnerView developed a Resident Satisfaction Survey for Kansas composed of 32 questions divided into QOL, QOC, QOS, and global satisfaction subdomains.

Results: After controlling for facility characteristics, satisfaction with overall QOL and QOC was higher in homes that had fully implemented PCC. Although some individual measures in the QOS domain (eg, food) showed greater satisfaction at earlier levels of implementation, high satisfaction was observed primarily in homes that had fully implemented PCC.

Conclusion: These findings provide evidence for the effectiveness of PCC implementation on nursing home resident satisfaction. The PEAK 2.0 program may provide replicable methods for nursing homes and states to implement PCC systematically.

Keywords: Nursing homes; culture change; long-term care; person-centered care; quality; satisfaction.