Registered private nursing homes in Scotland: referral and assessment practice.

The results on referral to and assessment for nursing homes, taken from a national survey of all registered private nursing homes in Scotland, are reported in this paper. The findings challenge the view that nursing homes do little by way of assessing potential candidates and that what is done is somehow at variance with the type of assessments carried out in the public long-stay sector. The implications for the future of the traditional view of which professionals should be involved in the assessment of candidates for nursing homes are discussed as are the criteria they might use to make their assessments.