The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released on Thursday quality ratings for each of the nation’s 15,800 nursing homes that participate in Medicare or Medicaid. The ratings were unveiled on the agency’s web site.

 

The nursing homes will receive stars for categories such as state inspections, staffing levels and quality measures like the percentage of residents with pressure sores. Under the new system, rating a nursing home with five stars means it ranks “much above average,” four stars, “above average,” three stars, “about average,” two stars, “below average” and one star, “much below average.” The rankings will be updated quarterly.

 

Roughly 10 percent of the facilities have five stars and roughly 20 percent have one star, said Charles Phillips, a professor of health policy and management at Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, in College Station. He served on the advisory panel that developed the rating system

 

More than 1.5 million people live in the 16,000 U.S. nursing homes. US Census figures that the number of Americans age 65 or older will double by 2030 and that two-thirds of today’s 65-year-olds will require some period of long-term care later in their lives. The CMS estimates that more than 1 million Americans enter a nursing home each year.

 

Given the circumstances, the new rating system will help many people looking for a right place for their loved ones. Looking for such a place “is one of the hardest decisions that families ever make,” said Debra Greenberg, a senior social worker in the division of geriatrics instruction at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City.

 

Although the Web site formally launched Thursday, CMS is soliciting comments on the site through June and July.