Changes in the use of personal assistance and special equipment from 1982 to 1989: results from the 1982 and 1989 NLTCS.

Analysis of data from the 1982, 1984 and 1989 National Long-term Care Surveys suggests that long-term care use is changing. Between 1982 and 1989, equipment use by persons with light physical impairment, or to supplement personal assistance for the severely disabled, increased. Over this same period, there was a decline in the use of personal assistance as the sole modality to deal with chronic impairments. Since equipment costs are nonrecurrent, whereas personal assistance costs are recurrent, this finding has implications for long-term care policy.