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To the Editor: The Research Letter by Teno and colleagues¹ on persistent pain in nursing home residents used data from the Minimum Data Set (MDS), a nationally mandated nursing home resident assessment instrument, and determined that large numbers of nursing home residents lack pain relief.

In December 2000, the Inspector General (IG) of the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a report² in which the IG determined that there were "apparently differences in nursing home staffs' understanding of the MDS and the resident assessment process.'' The IG recommended that the Health Care Financing Administration "more clearly define MDS elements" and "work with the nursing home industry to provide enhanced and coordinated training to nursing homes to be sure that similar and accurate information about the MDS is being disseminated."²(p15)

While information taken from the MDS may be the best information available, the IG's report suggests that the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Joan M. Teno, MD; Vincent Mor, PhD; Sherry Weitzen, MS; Terrie Wetle, PhD
Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research and Department of Community Health
Brown Medical School
Providence, RI

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RELATED LETTER

Persistent Pain in Nursing Home Residents
Joan M. Teno, Sherry Weitzen, Terrie Wetle, and Vincent Mor
JAMA. 2001;285(16):2081.
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