An Examination of Total Charges in the Long-Term Health Care Industry

A significant amount of work relating to long-term health care costs has appeared in the literature. Although shortcomings exist, there is at least some understanding of the relationships underlying costs. The subject of charges for long-term health care, however, has essentially been ignored in the literature to date. The purpose of this study was to gain an initial understanding of those factors underlying differences in charges per resident. The study used descriptive data from the 1977 National Nursing Home Survey and regression analysis to examine the relative effects of three sets of characteristics on charges per resident: characteristics of the facility, characteristics relating to the resident's medical needs, and characteristics relating to the socioeconomic status of the resident.