The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a unit of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has developed a first-ever quality rating system for nursing homes nationally. The system will cover 15,800 homes.
“Our goal in developing this unprecedented quality rating system is to provide families a straightforward assessment of nursing home quality, with meaningful distinctions between high and low performing homes,” said Kerry Weems, who is the CMS acting administrator. “The new information will also help consumers and families identify important questions to ask nursing homes and challenge nursing homes to improve their quality of care.”
In the new rating system, each nursing home will get a rating of one to five. These star ratings will flow from health inspections, staff information, and quality of care measures. Got to Nursing Home Compare web site at www.medicare.gov to see the ratings.
The criteria to rate nursing homes were developed with input from experts from academia, patient advocacy, and nursing home provider groups. The three ranking areas include:
- Health inspection surveys. State and federal surveyors go on site annually at the 15,800 nursing home to assess health care services and regulatory compliance . Additionally, about about 50,000 complaints are investigated yearly. Ratings were developed from the three last years of survey information.
- Quality measures. Using 10 quality measures available on the Nursing Home Compare web site, the ratings are further developed. These measures include percent of at-risk residents with pressure ulcers after the initial 90 days in a home, the number of residents with worsening mobility after admission, and residents receiving correct medical care.
- Staffing information. This documents hours of care by medical and other staff per patient per day.
Resulting from these posted measurements, the public can see a a quality rating for each area and total score. The ratings are updated monthly.
“Around three million Americans depend on nursing homes at some point during each year to provide life-saving care,” Weems said. “Most of those individuals are enrolled in Medicaid or Medicare and we all bear a special responsibility to protect their health and welfare. Adding this new quality rating system to our Web site is a huge step toward giving our beneficiaries and their loved ones meaningful information to compare nursing homes more easily.”
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