Using “ The Observable indicators of Nursing Home Care Quality”instrument to measure quality of nursing home care– in Taichung City

[[abstract]]Abstract Long term care is an important issue of a country with aged population, and the old age population in Taiwan reached 10% at the end of 2006. Due to the increase of aged and disabled population, the need for long-term care increases as well, and so does the number of nursing homes. Therefore, how to ensure the quality of nursing home care is an important task today. The registered nursing homes in Taichung City is what the research aimed at, and “the observable indicators of nursing home care quality” instrument was used as a tool, and the researcher used structural questionnaires and on-site observation method to collect the data, and the purpose of this research is to evaluate the level of consistency between “the accreditation survey for nursing homes” instrument and “the observable indicators of nursing home care quality” instrument. The total number of nursing home evaluated is 12, and the highest, the lowest and the average scores measured by “the observable indicators of nursing home care quality” instrument are 172, 115 and 139.33 respectively. The average scores for dimensions of instrument from the highest to the lowest are in the order of “staff”, “environment”, “care ”, “communication ” and “home/family involvement”. The level of consistency between ““the accreditation survey for nursing homes” instrument and “the observable indicators of nursing home care quality” instrument was evaluated by 0.167 kappa value, and it does not have an significant meaning, and it means that the result measured from “the accreditation survey for nursing homes” instrument is not consistent with the result from “the observable indicators of nursing home care quality” instrument. But the measured result of “staff” dimension in OIQs is consistent with the result of “health” and “daily life care”; the result of “staff” dimension in OIQs is consistent with the result of “health” and “daily life care”; the result of “environment” dimension in OIQs is consistent with the result of “safety and environment setting”; the result of “homelike/family involvement” dimension in OIQs is consistent with the result of “safety and environment setting”. The result of “communication” dimension in OIQs is not consistent with the result of “health”; the result of “staff” dimension in OIQs is not consistent with the result of “institute and staff management”. This research suggests that when the quality of a nursing home care is measured by “the observable indicators of nursing home care quality” instrument, other evaluation tools should be also used to ensure a complete and comprehensive evaluation. And the supervising authorities could use this instrument to evaluate the quality of a nursing home care periodically in order to continuously control the quality