The association of institutional relocation and mortality among elderly patients has been the subject of considerable debate, in part, because of equivocal findings in the literature. However, much of the research in this area is limited by small sample sizes, use of arbitrary follow-up periods and crude statistical methods. The present analyses are based on six years of mortality data in a chronic care hospital that experienced a mass relocation of patients to a new facility. After adjusting for age, gender and length of stay before follow-up, the odds ratio for mortality associated with relocation was 1.53.
