ore alternatives today. Today there is popular support for lower cost alternatives which enable the patient to stay within the larger community. The patient is assisted as much as possible by a range of personnel, both medical and social, and more of a premium is placed on the older person's ability to avoid institutionalization.
Actually, only 5 percent of people sixty-five and older live in a nursing home (Rosemire, 1996, p. 46); however, "the number of Americans over the age of 65 has been rising rapidly for several decades" (Bluford, 1994, p. 28). The other 95 percent employ a wide range of living arrangements, including those mentioned above. Why, then, has the nursing home lingered on as an unpleasant reminder that we are failing in our attempt to improve both the quantity and quality of life? As one of the first solutions to long-term residential care for the elderly, the nursing home came to be the primary institution to solve the societal problem of caring for an increasingly aged population.
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