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To obtain information about aged care services in rural New South Wales public hospitals, and to describe key operational aspects of their service delivery models.

A mixed methods design was used to combine data collected from: (i) a survey of public hospitals and (ii) qualitative site visits in a sample of eleven rural sites.

Rural public hospitals in NSW, Australia.

Qualitative data were collected from multidisciplinary clinicians, managers and community service providers who participated in site visits in 2010 and from surveys of NSW public hospitals in 2009/10 about aged care and dementia services.

Survey and site visit findings demonstrated that rural hospitals have fewer secure beds for managing patients with disturbed behaviour due to dementia and delirium and fewer speciality aged care staff than metropolitan hospitals. Site visit participants also described …