Identifying the older person likely to require long-term care services.

The purpose of this study is to determine the accuracy of predictions in identifying older persons who subsequently require long-term care such as home services or institutionalization. Eighty-six individuals undergoing geriatric evaluation between May 1983 and April 1984 were evaluated using a series of commonplace tasks such as opening doors, stacking checkers, and copying a simple sentence. Predictions of an individual's use of long-term care services were made during the initial evaluation and were based on whether the person could complete all the manual tasks and on the amount of time required to do so. Outcomes were determined by telephone interviews by a trained social worker in Dec 1984. A statistically significant association (P less than 0.005) was observed between the predictions and actual outcomes. Analysis of variance confirmed that the mean times for each outcome were different (F = 2.6, P less than 0.05). The results suggest that timing manual performance offers a useful way to prospectively identify older persons at risk of requiring additional long-term care services.