Costs and management of urinary incontinence in long-term care.

The three aims of the study were (1) to assess the impact and cost of urinary incontinence in long-term care, (2) to determine whether 24-hour incontinence monitoring provides information that improves management, and (3) to ascertain whether costs (nursing time and laundry) could be reduced. The setting was two 24-bed long-term care units in an urban hospital. The research was conducted in three stages. During the initial stage, the impact of incontinence was measured on each unit. Impact was defined as total number of incontinent episodes, nursing time spent changing these patients, and laundry costs, measured during a 7-day period on each unit. After this phase of the investigation, individualized 24-hour incontinence monitoring, followed by recommendations and implementation of care plan, was carried out on one unit. No monitoring or recommendations for care were completed on the other unit, which served as a control. During the third phase of the study, the number of incontinent episodes, nursing time, and laundry costs were again measured on both units. Initially (58%) of residents (24/48) were incontinent, representing 859 episodes of urinary leakage each week that required 45 hours of nursing time to change clothing, containment devices, and bed linens. The direct costs of the nursing time and laundry, expressed in Canadian dollars were $8.60/day per incontinent resident. After 24-hour monitoring of 10 residents one on unit, suggestions were made for various incontinence management programs. An unexpected but simple recommendation was a change to a better containment system for urinary leakage. When impact was measured, a 13% reduction in the number of incontinent episodes was found.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)