CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics Launches 2018 National Study of Long-Term Care Providers
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has launched the fourth wave of the National Study of Long-Term Care Providers (NSLTCP). NSLTCP is an ongoing federally funded study to report information about the characteristics of five major sectors of long term care services: (1) assisted living and similar residential care; (2) adult day; (3) home health; (4) nursing home; and (5) hospice. Per NCHS, the 2018 study will be collecting information from a randomly selected sample of 1,650 adult day services centers and 2,090 residential care communities throughout the United States.
If your center or residential care community is selected to participate, you will receive an informational packet via the U.S. Postal Service and an invitational call about participating in the two study components. The two components of the 2018 NSLTCP include a web or mail provider questionnaire that asks information about your organizational characteristics, types of services you offer, your staffing profile, and the demographic and functional status profile of your participants or residents.
In 2018, for the first time, NSLTCP will also collect information about individual services users, or participants and residents, during the second study component. A telephone call will be scheduled with you, at your convenience, to randomly sample two participants or residents from your center or residential care community. During the scheduled call, NSLTCP will collect information through a services user questionnaire about the demographics, health and functional status, and service utilization of the two selected participants or residents. The benefit of collecting this individual participant or resident information is that NCHS will be able to obtain more in-depth data and provide you, researchers, advocates, and policymakers with a richer source of information about participants or residents.
If selected, you will be contacted by NSLTCP to:
- Read important information about the survey;
- Screen for eligibility and schedule an appointment to complete the services user component;
- Complete the provider questionnaire;
- Prepare information for the services user sampling and questionnaire; and
- Complete the services user sampling and questionnaire.
The 2018 survey data will be released via freely accessible reports on the NSLTCP website, and for the first time, a public use data file will be available for download from the NSLTCP website free of charge. The public use file will contain de-identified information about the eligible centers and residential care communities (and their participants or residents) that completed all components of the 2018 study.
This newly available data will allow stakeholders to easily access NSLTCP data for their own analyses. As always, under law, NCHS will not release any information that would allow the identification of a center or residential care community, its staff, or its enrolled participants or current residents.
Members are encouraged to contact LeadingAge’s Ruth Katz at rkatz@leadingage.org or Janine Finck-Boyle at jfinck-boyle@leadingage.org with any questions about the study.