Preliminary Long-Term Care Opinion Leader Survey Results

The Commonwealth Fund and Brown University conducted a survey of long-term care leaders. Over 1100 respondents, including consumer advocates, providers, public officials, and policy experts, completed the survey between September 2007 and March 2008. The research objectives were described as:

• Assess the views of long-term care opinion leaders with regard to the current state of long-term care in the United States, the attributes of an ideal long-term care system, and potential areas and strategies for reform;


• Identify areas of agreement and disagreement about the nature of the long-term care problem across opinion leader type;


• Compare the views of national, state, private sector and research based long-term care opinion leaders vis-à-vis the character of suggested strategies for reform;


• Learn about the networks of long-term care opinion leaders and how knowledge and views regarding important long-term care issues diffuse among them;


• Compare views of long-term care opinion leaders to those of other health care opinion leaders and the general public that have emerged from previous surveys.

Among the findings, eighty-five percent ranked the workplace as one of the top three challenges facing long-term care, followed by financing (66%) and achieving quality (60%). More ranked nursing homes as fair or poor (53%) than other service types, including hospices (6%). They favored adopting savings incentives and adding a long-term care benefit to Medicare. Few had faith in consumer report cards to help people make informed choices. Read more by downloading the top-level findings.