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Mukamel: Nursing home rating measures should help consumers find the best facility for their needs

Current government ratings for nursing homes such as Nursing Home Compare differ so much from consumers’ personal rankings, they could benefit from personalization, according to a new study.

Conducted by researchers at the University of California-Irvine, the study targeted government-provided, Five-Star Ratings System-based nursing home ratings, like those found on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Nursing Home Compare website.

Nursing Home Compare offers a “one-size-fits-all-patients” look at skilled nursing facilities that doesn’t take into account individual patients’ medical needs and preferences, researchers said. Allowing consumers to personalize the nursing home ratings could paint a broader picture of the facilities, and help consumers choose which provider is the best for them, the team suggested.

Blogger comment:

The study proves that the five star system developed by the regulators and academics don’t measure anything but compliance with non quality related survey criteria and arbitrary capricious subjective enforcement measures.  That would be less ominous but now those ratings are ruling out providers from downstream contracts with the health systems … even though they are restoring patients back to the community and not necessarily complying   with flawed input data (not outcome data) and have only 1, 2 stars will eventually be forced out of business.