A Brief Overview of the Development of the Nursing Home Sector in the United States

This chapter offers a brief overview of the development of the nursing home sector in the United States. It builds on existing overview works and brings the chronology forward to the end of the twentieth century to discuss areas including the emergence of the modern model of nursing homes, the role of public programs in shaping nursing home funding, efforts to standardize care and facility management, the growth of for-profit nursing home chains in the 1980s, nursing home labor issues, and how nursing homes confronted the AIDS crisis in the United States. This chapter highlights the vital and changing role of nursing homes within the American health care system.