Estimating the long-term care population: prevalence rates and selected characteristics.

To facilitate manpower and service need estimates, the long-term care population must be defined in terms of dependency on human assistance in daily functioning. Such a definition of dependency is applied to national population data bases, using the 1977 National Nursing Home Survey and the 1977, 1979, and 1980 National Health Interview Surveys. The four categories of dependency are personal care, mobility, household activities, and home-administered health care services. Although projections to the year 2000 show a doubling of the nursing home population, estimates of the overall prevalence of functional dependency remain smaller than is popularly believed.