Long-Term Care: Facts on Care in the US (LTCfocus)

The Health and Retirement Study Contextual Data Resource (HRS-CDR) is a collection of user-friendly datasets that enable researchers to study the impact of place on health and well-being among HRS respondents.

This HRS-CDR data product was created by researchers from Brown University with funding from the NIA (R03 AG046482).

The Shaping Long-Term Care in America NIA-funded program project grant (PPG) [P0-1-AG-27296] conducted at the Brown University Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research explores the effect of state policies and market forces on the availability and quality of nursing home care in the US. As part of this effort, Brown researchers have compiled, analyzed, aggregated and cleaned pertinent data at the provider, county and state level for the period 2000 to 2010. These data, called LTCfocus, detail the health and functional status of nursing home residents, the characteristics of care facilities, the state policies relevant to long-term care services and financing, and the characteristics of markets in which facilities exist. The data, currently available on the project website http://ltcfocus.org/, can be used interactively and the entire database can be downloaded, allowing researchers to address their own questions regarding the relationship between state policies and local market forces and the quality of long-term care.

The HRS-LTCfocus is a user-friendly version of the data designed to be readily linkable by zip code, Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) provider ID, county, and state to numerous HRS-restricted files. It contains variables with consistent and intuitive naming conventions. There is one file for each of 3 levels of data: SNF facility, county, and state, with information for most variables spanning 2000-2010. Each file contains 1 observation per unit-level per year.