To understand the services demands of elderly people with different ability levels in urban nursing homes.

The services demands of 674 elderly people with different ability levels living in 18 nursing homes in 9 provinces were investigated. The ability level was judged by ability assessment for older adults (MZ/T 039-2013). ANOVA was used to compare the demands with different groups.

Six hundred and seventy-four elderly people were mainly constituted by 70~89 years old (82.2%), having no spouse (61.3%), self-funded (86.8%), and the main reason (58.9%) for living in nursing homes is their relatives had no time to take care of them. The demands of daily life care services, medical and health services and psychological comfort services gradually rose with aggravation of physical damage. The demands of leisure and entertainment services declined with aggravation of physical damage. The differences were statistically significant(F=177.546, 11.269, 4.484, 10.097, all P<0.01). The demand degrees of all the daily life care services rose with aggravation of physical damage (F=150.468, 123.718, 129.496, 78.739, 138.319, 160.589, all P<0.01). Except health education and health care of traditional Chinese Medicine, the demand degrees of other medical and health services rose with aggravation of physical damage (F=8.648, 7.948, 13.009, 10.388, 7.703, 16.342, all P<0.01). The demand degrees of all the leisure and entertainment services declined with aggravation of physical damage (F=3.287, 16.570, 4.127, all P<0.05 or P<0.01). In the dimension of psychological comfort services, the differences among groups in adding visitation frequency were statistically significant (F=7.918, P<0.01). The ability level of elderly people was positively correlated with demand of daily life care services, medical and health services and psychological comfort services (r=0.606, 0.214, 0.108, all P<0.01), and was negatively correlated with demand of leisure and entertainment services(r= -0.197,P<0.01).

The ability level of elderly people living in the urban nursing homes was relevant with the demand of daily life care services, medical and health services, leisure and entertainment services and psychological comfort services. The differences of ability level groups were statistically significant. Nursing homes should pay attention to the ability assessment, and divide functional area, develop care plan, service delivery personally according to the demands.