State Variation in Long-Term Care Availability, Regulation, and Cost and Suicide Mortality Among Older Adults in the United States: 2010-2015

Matthew C Lohman; Tomohiro M Ko; Ashley Rapp; Erica Bennion; Briana Mezuk

doi:10.1016/j.jamda.2021.02.008

State Variation in Long-Term Care Availability, Regulation, and Cost and Suicide Mortality Among Older Adults in the United States: 2010-2015

J Am Med Dir Assoc. 2021 Nov;22(11):2337-2343.e3. doi: 10.1016/j.jamda.2021.02.008. Epub 2021 Mar 12.

Authors

Matthew C Lohman¹, Tomohiro M Ko², Ashley Rapp³, Erica Bennion³, Briana Mezuk³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of South Carolina, Arnold School of Public Health, Columbia, SC, USA. Electronic address: lohmanm@mailbox.sc.edu.
² Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
³ Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

Abstract

Objectives: Residential long-term care (LTC) facilities may be key settings for the prevention of suicide among older adults; however, little is known about the relationship between statewide policies determining characteristics of LTC facilities and suicide mortality. The primary goal of this study was to evaluate the association between state policies regarding availability, regulation, and cost of LTC and suicide mortality among adults aged 55 and older in the United States over a 5-year period.

Design: Longitudinal ecological study.

Setting and participants: LTC residents from 16 states reporting mortality data to the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) from 2010 to 2015.

Methods: We linked suicide data from the NVDRS and data sources on LTC services and regulations for 16 states. We applied a natural language-processing algorithm to identify suicide deaths related to LTC. We used fixed effect regression models to assess whether state variation in LTC characteristics is related to variation in the rate of suicide (both overall and related to LTC) among older adults.

Results: There were 25,040 suicides among those aged 55 and older reported to the NVDRS during the study period; 382 suicides were determined to be associated with LTC in some manner. After adjusting for state-level characteristics, greater average nursing home capacity was significantly associated with increase in the cumulative incidence of suicide related to LTC (β = 0.087, SE = 0.026, P < .01), but not overall suicide incidence. Neither cost nor regulation measures were significantly associated with state-level LTC-related suicide incidence.

Conclusions and implications: State-level variations in LTC facility capacity are related to variation in LTC-related suicide incidence among older adults. Given the challenges of preventing suicide among older adults through facility- or individual-level interventions, policies governing the features and provision of LTC services may therefore serve as a means for public health suicide prevention.

Keywords: Suicide; long-term care; policy; regulation.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Aged
Cause of Death
Homicide
Humans
Long-Term Care*
Population Surveillance
Suicide Prevention*
United States / epidemiology
Violence

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

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