Nursing-Home Infections — The Context

Abstract

Among the technologic, economic, and cultural milestones of the past decade, one was scarcely noticed: The number of beds committed to nursing-home care in the United States surpassed the number of beds in acute-care hospitals.¹ Long-term care of the elderly has always been a relatively hidden component of the health-care system. We now face the paradoxical circumstance that this hidden system has become more extensive than the more visible system that eclipses it. Geriatric long-term care is now a $25-billion-a-year industry; fully 40 per cent of the Medicaid budget for all age groups is spent on nursing-home care for the . . .