Nursing Home Compare hurt by mistrust, unawareness, report finds

This article is questioning the validity of the nursing home compare system utilized by the Government to rate nursing homes.

As for finding the most appropriate nursing home? Let’s just say your options are a bit more limited. Well, there’s the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Nursing Home Compare website, which will reveal how many “stars” specific facilities received on their last inspection.

Now what if that person you are trying to place needs rehab, or vent care, or is recovering from a stroke? Those stars might not do you much good. It’s sort of like the old “Saturday Night Live” sketch about the Olympia Restaurant, where the menu is limited to cheeseburgers, potato chips and Pepsi.

That’s why a new option created by University of California researchers looks especially promising. Their “Nursing Home Compare Plus” app offers enhancements that let patients and their families create their own composite scores — based on their own preferences and medical needs.

Blogger comment:

John and the California professors are right on … an inspection system that overlooks the positives misses opportunity to recognize real quality .. quality as pointed out by Dr. Edwards H. Deming is a process not an event … that’s why I keep pointing the pundits to the Illinois Six Star QUIP program that was used in the 1980’s to reward the best of the best with bonuses at the end of the year.  It was measured by an annual QUIP survey looking for the positives not the negatives … it evaluated staffing, documentation, family involvement, discharge planning, community involvement and outcomes meeting the patients’ needs.  Each category was evaluating outcomes, not negative mistakes, assigning a star for each that meet the criteria of excellence.  There were some one to five star facilities and fewer six star facilities.  The six star facilities were awarded the Plaque of Excellence as the best in the State.  They were publicized by the State as the best.  Each star carried a per patient day bonus paid annually for total Medicaid days.

My two facilities gained six star status by using the stars to motivate my staff and amounted to  over $150,000 per year  that could be used for salary increases. Why isn’t this great patient centered outcome based survey utilized now in Illinois or all over the country?  Well it was thrown out by the corrupt Illinois legislature in 1991 bowing to the pressures coming from the one, two and three star facilities that deemed it judgmental and unfair.  I have proposed this to CMS and AHCA and get the same reaction … silence.  Ironically it is was in 1989 that the MDS (a worthless assessment instrument) came into existence along with RUGs-1 (a terrible payment system) based on negative criteria.  If it is so great why are we still looking and praying for a way to reward and reinforce outcomes rather then penalize and enforce penalties on income?