Nursing homes with high quality ratings are sued almost as often as lower performing nursing homes, according to a new study published by the New England Journal of Medicine. And researchers found litigation or its likelihood does not necessarily result in better care.æ Researchers analyzed information about nursing home lawsuits...
Tag: nursing home compare
Nursing Homes Compare Adds Valuable Consumer Information
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has been making changes to the Nursing Home Compare website http://www.medicare.gov/ and is seeking comments from stakeholders and visitors to the site.ææ On April 23rd, CMS added information to allow consumers to more directly file complaints about nursing homes with State Survey...
Iowa Eliminates 10 Nursing Home Inspectors
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) has cut 10 of the state’s 38 nursing home inspecting positions. That leaves just 28 people to inspect 442 nursing homes! Iowa’s financial challenges were the reason for the reduction. Officials said other staffers in the Inspections and Appeals department could be trained to fill...
CMS Revamps Website to Make It Easier for Seniors to Navigate and Find Information
www.medicare.gov, the Medicare consumer-focused Web site has now been updated to make it easier for seniors and people who care for them to find the information they need about Medicare. The improved Web site provides users with a summary of Medicare benefits, coverage options, rights and protections, and answers to...
Brown University Introduces New Web Site to Compare Nursing Homes
A new web site for analyzing and choosing nursing homes has been developed by the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research at Brown University. It is www.LTCfocUS.org. Because it is academically based it seeks to provide evidence based data that is unencumbered by the politics and the inaccuracies of other...
Is Quality Really Better in Not for Profit Nursing Homes?
Canadian researchers published a study in the British Medical Journal in which they examined 82 studies carried out in the United States and Canada from 1965 to 2003 comparing quality between for-profit and not-for-profit nursing homes. Forty studies showed significantly better quality in not-for-profit homes and three showed the quality...
CMS Five Star – Friend or Foe?
PentaStar Collaborative published a survey of 356 nursing home administrators on the CMS Five Star Rating System and how they felt it would effect their facilities. Find the survey here. Two items stood out for me. When asked what effect their rating would have on the perception of their facility...
Some Caveats to the Nursing Home Compare 5 Star Rating System
We have said in the past that the Nursing Home Compare site even before the 5 Star rating was introduced was just a start in evaluating nursing facilities. I will continue to share a myriad of tips I have accumulated for evaluating care homes. That said when looking at the...
Nursing Home Compare
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rolled out its 5-Star Rating System on Nursing Home Compare, the federal government’s site for consumer research on nursing homes. The rating system is based on information from the last three years of surveys and complaints, staffing information collected at survey and...