Nicholas Castle (Ph.D., Health Policy and Analysis, Penn State
University 1994), is an Assistant Professor with the University
of Pittsburgh. He currently has over 60 publications in peer-reviewed
journals, and is the PI on five active grants and one federal
contract.
Prior to joining the Graduate School of Public Health, Dr.
Castle worked as the Director of Outcomes Research for an integrated
care company. This involved developing, implementing, and testing
more than 50 different surveys. Dr. Castle recently used this
survey experience for elder care issues. This includes serving
as project leader to develop a targeted, short, nursing home
satisfaction survey for the New Jersey DHSS. He also worked for
RAND, becoming involved with the nursing home component of the
Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Study (NH-CAHPS). He is still
working on the NH-CAHPS.
Dr. Castle has extensive experience in the area of secondary
data analysis as well as survey development and primary data
collection, and he has broad knowledge of the health and economic
issues facing nursing home residents. Analyzing both OSCAR data
and the Area Resource File (ARF) data, he has examined organizational
outcomes such as facility closure and resident-level outcomes
such as physical restraint use as well as the use of psychotropic
medications. Using MDS data, he has examined hospitalization
of nursing home residents and advance directives. Prior to this
work with these data sets, Dr. Castle investigated how institutional
factors can affect the outcomes of nursing home residents with
mental illnesses, and mortality rates of nursing home residents
with mental illnesses. As a result of his work on nursing home
quality, Dr. Castle was awarded the American College of Health
Care Administrators Long-Term Care Researcher of the year award
(2001).
He is currently examining staff turnover in nursing homes, the
federal report card Nursing Home Compare, and nursing home administrator
job satisfaction.
Research Areas of Interest:
quality of care assessment in long-term care
Representative Articles
Castle, N.G. 2004. "Family satisfaction of nursing home
residents." International Journal for Quality in Health
Care, 16(6): 1-7.
Castle, N.G. and Engberg, J. 2004. "Response scales and
satisfaction of elders.” The Gerontologist, 44(3): 358-367.
Castle, N.G. 2004. "Resident satisfaction in a Transitional
Care Unit.” Journal of Applied Gerontology, 23(4): 411-428.
Castle, N.G. 2003. "Searching for and selecting a nursing
facility." Medical Care Research and Review, 60(2): 223-247.
Castle, N.G. 2003. "Outcomes information in nursing homes:
Can they make a difference?" The Gerontologist, 43(4): 483-492.
Castle, N.G. 2002. "Nursing homes with persistent deficiency
citations for physical restraint use.” Medical Care, 40(10):
868-878.
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