UCSF

Importance

Adaptive equipment, such as shower grab bars and modified toilet seating, is effective but underused in the United States. To change this, a better understanding of how equipment ends up being installed is needed. We hypothesized that rehabilitation services were a major mechanism.

Objective

To examine the association between receipt of rehabilitation services and installation of adaptive equipment.

Design

Observational cohort of the National Health and Aging Trends Study in 2015 and 2016.

Setting

Community.

Participants

A total of 416 community-dwelling adults age 65 yr or older who needed bathing equipment and 454 who needed toileting equipment.

Outcomes and measures

Study outcomes were the installation of bathing or toileting equipment. The primary independent variable was the receipt of rehabilitation services between 2015 and 2016.

Results

Among older adults who needed equipment in 2015, 34.3% had bathing equipment and 19.2% had toileting equipment installed by 2016. In multivariate logistic regression analyses, rehabilitation services were associated with installation of bathing (odds ratio [OR] = 5.07, 95% confidence interval [CI] [2.60, 9.89]) and toileting equipment (OR = 2.67, 95% CI [1.48, 4.84]).

Conclusions and relevance

A minority of those in need have adaptive equipment installed within a year. In the current health care system, rehabilitation providers play a major role in equipment installation. What This Article Adds: Rehabilitation providers are involved in the installation of adaptive bathroom equipment among older persons who need it. Still, most in need of equipment do not have it after a year, suggesting that further work is needed to increase access to rehabilitation providers and develop other avenues for obtaining equipment.