Abstract
Administrators in long-term care may have an important influence on quality of care. Limited prior research has described the characteristics of nursing home administrators. Despite growing emphasis on home health care as an alternative to nursing homes, almost no research has described the characteristics of administrators of home health agencies. Using the 2004 National Nursing Home Survey and the 2007 National Home and Hospice Care Survey, we describe the career experience of administrators, and examine the relationship between experience and education of administrators both within and across the nursing home and home health sectors. We also explore the characteristics of nursing homes and home health agencies, including establishment ownership (e.g., nonchain not-for-profit), that are associated with being able to attract administrators with the most experience. We find that home health administrators have, on average, less experience than nursing home administrators. Among home health agencies, administrators with the least experience also tend to have less education. in nursing homes, administrators with less experience tend to have more education. Results from multivariate analysis suggest that chain for-profits may be the least able to attract experienced administrators. More research on the effects of different levels of experience and education among administrators is needed.
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