patrick.net

The Medicare program has used a "five star" rating for nursing homes for years. The rating was based on a complicated formula that basically had nothing to do with reality. For example, the rating was awarded based on comparison with other nursing homes in the area, with only a certain percentage being either above or below average. If a nursing home failed its inspection, it could still be rated "average" in the five-star rating system. IMHO, the rating system was yet another useless method of rating nursing homes.

Family members would tell me that they were impressed at the staff to patient ratio that was presented on the website, but the information is fairly useless because it includes staff members who have nothing to do with patient care at all. Nursing homes with horrible track records use this rating as a marketing technique, because sometimes that's all they have that's rated average or above.

Now, however, the actual survey is now displayed on the site. This is awesome - but since it's new, I'm not sure how the feds will be listing nursing homes that failed their survey and yet negotiated the findings down after years of legal wrangling. It'll be interesting to see how those results are listed, especially since the actual inspection report is now displayed on the website.

The site also lists the fines that the nursing homes paid for crappy results. It does take a bit of looking, but the information is readily available now. I do wish it went further and showed any fines that the nursing home administrators and directors of nursing had to pay to their licensure boards (either past or present), but there's no mention whatsoever about this. This information is important, because it is a reflection of the nursing home's leadership.

Another problem with the site is that it has trouble differntiating between past and present survey results for nursing homes that have changed their names. An example is a facility that was formerly known as "Henderson Healthcare" in Henderson, NV. The facilty is now called "Clearview Health & Rehabilitation." The family member of a potential admission won't find any results under Henderson Healthcare. Searching under Clearview won't provide any insight into fines that were issued in the past (they will show that there's no history of fines).

This facility is owned by a corporation that owns five facilities in the Las Vegas area. Three of them are rated "much below average," while one is rated "below average." But because the company uses a strategy wherein each facility is its own corporation and sends "consulting fees" to the parent corporation each month, the ownership area of the Medicare site doesn't show the relationship between all of this corporation's facilities, nor does it provide info about the parent corporation. If people were to have this information, they would be able to make informed decisions as to where a family member might go.

The site does prove a lot of information, and is a valuable tool that family members can use to research facilities... but again, it does have a long way to go.