A nursing home, a facility for the care of individuals who do not require hospitalization and who cannot be cared for at home, is a type of care of residents. It is a place of residence of people who require constant nursing care and have significant deficiencies with activity of daily living (NNHS, 2004).
People enter nursing homes for a variety of reasons. Some may enter for a brief time when they leave the hospital because they need sub-acute care, such as skilled nursing care, medical services, and therapies (NNHS, 2004). Others, however, need long-term care (LTC). LTC is generally defined as a broad range of personal, social, and medical services that assist people who have functional or cognitive limitations in their ability to perform self-care and other activities necessary to live independently (NNHS, 2004).
In the United States, nursing homes are required to have a licensed nurse on duty 24 hours a day, and during at least one shift each day, one of those nurses must be a Register Nurse (RN) (NNHS, 2004). A RN is a health care professional responsible for implementing the practice of nursing in concert with other health care professionals (American Nurses Association, 2006).
In Apr., 2005, there were a total of 16,094 nursing homes in the United States. Some states having nursing homes that are called nursing facilities (NF), which do not have beds certified for Medicare patients, but can only treat patients whose payments sources is Private Payment, Private Insurance, or Medicaid (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2008). Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the U.S. government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over, or who meet other special criteria (Castle, 2008). Medicaid is the U.S. health program for eligible individuals and families with low incomes and resources. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the states and federal government, and is managed by the states. Among the groups of people served by Medicaid are eligible low-income parents, children, seniors, and people with disabilities. Being poor, or even very poor, does not necessarily qualify an individual for Medicaid (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006a).