STUDY: Greater Culture Change Practice Leads to Better Health Outcomes

Researchers at Brown University recently analyzed care outcomes at over 800 nursing homes to measure care quality improvements as a result of culture change.

This study was the first to consider how the extent of culture change implementation affects quality of care.

The study’s authors found that a high level of implementation yields more robust care quality improvements compared to a low level of implementation.

The positive outcomes of more fully implemented culture change include:

• A decrease in prevalence of restraints, tube feeding, and pressure ulcers.
• An increase in the proportion of residents on bladder training programs.
• A decrease in the average number of hospitalizations per resident year.

Nursing homes with more limited practice implementation produced quality improvements as well, but not to the same degree as in nursing homes with more comprehensive culture change.

This study was published online on August 23 by the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. It closely follows two other studies on culture change featured in the most recent Journal of Applied Gerontology — one on nursing aide and resident family member preference for culture change and the other on the implementation process of culture change.

— by Stephen Campbell, PHI Policy Research Assistant