Because research studies on post-relocation mortality in the elderly have come to inconsistent and contradictory conclusions, clinical teams recommending patients for placement are still relying on educated intuition as a basis for clinical decisions in what may be a life-or-death matter for elderly institutionalized patients. This study was conducted to determine if patients at one state psychiatric hospital who were recommended for nursing home placement and were relocated to nursing homes were more likely to die than non-relocated patients. The study also sought to determine the factors which characterized the patients who died soon after the move. When mortality data were compared between a group of geriatric patients (N=99) relocated to nursing homes from a state psychiatric hospital and an inpatient control group (N=99) matched on age, sex, psychiatric diagnosis, and length of hospitalization, the number dying in the relocated group was significantly larger during the first 8 months post-placement (p<.05). Early deaths were found to be associated with age at placement, cardiovascular disease, healed fractures (p<.05) and dementia (p<.15). A discriminant model using these four variables categorized those dying early from those dying after 8.4 months (p<.01). (Author/NB)