Eight Years of Data on Residents in Small Dementia-Care Settings Suggest Functional Performance Is Maintained

Abstract

Eight years of data analysis on residents’ status from three small Alzheimer care centers suggest notable stability in function. Individuals’ functional ability was best in their first year, but their year-to-year decline was mostly not significant. Cognitive abilities also were best in the resident's first year, but first-, second-, and third-year cognitive scores were not significantly different. We compared the residents’ dementia progression rate to the true rate of natural disease progression. This study, like others on small homelike settings, suggests that appropriate homelike environments maintain persons with dementia at an optimum level longer.