The evaluation of the National Long Term Care Demonstration. 3. Recruitment and characteristics of channeling clients.

The National Long Term Care Demonstration (channeling) was designed to provide coordinated community-based long-term care services to those older persons at high risk of nursing home placement. A key component of the program was the process established to accomplish this targeting effort. In this article, the outreach and eligibility procedures developed in the demonstration are described. Characteristics of channeling clients are compared to those of clients from other long-term care demonstrations, a national nursing home sample, and a simulated national sample of functionally impaired older persons. Results indicate that the channeling clients were quite frail, more so than the clients served in most of the other long-term care demonstrations, but were younger, slightly less disabled, and more likely to be married than a national sample of nursing home residents.