Factors affecting return to living alone after medical rehabilitation: A cross-validation study

Objective: To cross validate and extend the authors' finding that cognition is one of the best predictors of return to living alone after medical rehabilitation. Design: A prospective sample of live-alone older medical rehabilitation patients followed from admission to discharge. Logistic regression identified significant predictors of return to living alone, and measures of predictive power were calculated. Setting: Stroke and geriatric units of a free-standing urban medical rehabilitation hospital. Participants: One hundred ninety-four older consecutively admitted medical rehabilitation patients 60 years old or older. Main Outcome Measure: Return to living alone versus discharge to living with others. Results: Consistent with the authors' original findings, both cognition and self-care motor skills were significant predictors of return to living alone. Cognition acted as a suppressor variable, leading to age and education effects only when entered into the regression equation. New variables did not add significantly to prediction. Conclusion: The value of rehabilitation psychologists' role in making cognition-based recommendations about discharge disposition in live-alone older adults is supported by findings from this study.