Prospects for transferring nursing home residents to the community

The Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 calls for states to develop strategies to "deinstitutionalize" nursing home residents. Using Minimum Data Set assessment data from 2005, we calculated the number of nursing home residents classified as "low-care" in each state using both a "narrow" and a "broad" definition. Between 5 percent (narrow) and 12 percent (broad) of the 1.4 million long-stay residents and similar proportions of new admissions remaining in a nursing home meet definitions for low care. States with lower investment in community alternatives had higher proportions of low-care nursing home residents.