Federal officials hope the new rating system for nursing homes across the country will put these facilities on the right path for improvement. The system will help people decide which home to chose. 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.
The scores are based on such measures such as how many nursing staff hours were provided each day to patients, how many patients developed bed sores and how many were placed in restraints. State inspections play a major role in ratings. But home could score low on the overall ranking, but have good results on one or more individual categories, such as quality.
On the one hand, consumers groups argue that from a consumer point of view the system is not stringent enough. Alice H. Hedt, executive director of the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform said consumer should take the star rating as a start point, but they shouldn’t completely rely on it on deciding what facility to choose.
The new system drew criticism from the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, an industry trade group, according to which the system “is poorly planned, prematurely implemented and hamhandedly rolled out.”
On the other hand, federal officials say that the system will put nursing homes “on the path to improvement,” as consumers will tend to avoid any facility with one- or two- star rating.
In September, government report has revealed that more than 90% of U.S. nursing homes surveyed violated federal care standards in each of the past three years. For-profit nursing homes had a higher percentage of violations, compared to other nursing homes: about 94 percent of the for-profit homes surveyed generated a citation, compared to 91 percent for government nursing homes and 88 percent for non-profits, according to the report.
The most common violations centered on quality of care, a category related to lack of services necessary for residents’ mental and physical well-being, improper storage and distribution of food and lack of the appropriate treatment to prevent and treat pressure sores and urinary tract infections.
According to preliminary figures, more than 100 of North Carolina’s 419 nursing homes will receive one-star ratings, while 68 will receive two stars. Nursing homes associated with hospitals ranked higher than those that were not. The ratings will appear on Medicare’s online information service.
The homes are typically inspected annually and must meet federal standards to participate in Medicaid and Medicare. Medicare pays for the treatment received by the patient, who can go any hospital or doctor that agrees to Medicare’s activity. According to estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Medicaid spends more than $125 billion on nursing home care nationally.
