Tag: five star

Nursing Home Care in Maine Something to Emulate

Recently U.S. News & World Report released its fifth annual list of best nursing homes. Its five-star rating system is based on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data related to care quality, health inspection findings and staffing levels.åÊ More than 15,000 nursing homes are included in the ratings, which...

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CMS Updates Nursing Home Compare Site (Again)

The government’s Nursing Home Compare website now includes more information about surveyor inspection findings and antipsychotic medication usage. The site is intended to give consumers and others a detailed look at nursing homes’ operations and performances. The site is continually being tweaked and that is good news for consumers even...

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Here’s a Good Nursing Home Story

The following is a guest blog by Linda Dickey. After 15 years of widowhood, at 89, my mom sold her condo in Lake Worth, FL, and moved to a rental apartment in a nearby retirement facility. For a few months, everything seemed to be fine. Then she had a sudden...

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Scripps Howard Analyzes Five Star Rating System

Scripps Howard conducted an analysis of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services‰Ûª Nursing Home Compare after Five Star introduction. Some nuggets: For-profit corporations, which account for about two-thirds of all nursing homes, generally get lower scores than those run by nonprofits groups. Homes with more nursing staff per patient,...

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California Nursing Homes Mandated to Post Five Star

The controversial Five Star nursing home rating system got more controversial as Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation requiring California nursing homes to post their rating effective January 1, 2011. The Five-Star Quality Rating System, which was launched in December 2008, uses data from nursing home surveys, staffing rates, and 10 quality...

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Special Focus Facilities – add more to the list says GAO

The government‰Ûªs Special Focus Facility (SFF) program should add 450 nursing homes according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GOA). The GAO wants to include 580 of the poorest performing facilities nationwide-a more than four-fold increase over the 136 facilities currently singled out by the program. It...

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Five-Star Rating Asked to be Suspended by 31 State Attorneys General

We have written about the Five-Star rating system in the past, CMS’s latest attempt at ranking and rating nursing facilities. In an interesting twist, a total of 31 state attorneys general sent a letter to the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services calling for the suspension and...

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