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By John M. Bigler This month's article will focus on a helpful website for comparing nursing homes. Www.Medicare.gov is the official U. S. Government website for Medicare. On the site there is a section regarding nursing homes comparisons. The purpose of the section is to provide information relating to Medicaid and Medicare certified nursing homes throughout the United States. The website includes information on payment, patient rights and a nursing home checklist which is invaluable in evaluating nursing homes. The website is broken into various sections. The "nursing home compare section" contains information on over 17,000 nursing homes nationwide. It is possible to narrow the search to New York State or even to just Suffolk County alone. You can even limit the search to particular towns such as Riverhead or Greenport and find information on specific local nursing homes. If you choose Suffolk County, you will see that there are 43 nursing homes available for review. The nursing home compare site includes nursing home characteristics such as the number of beds, type of ownership and whether or not the nursing home participates in Medicare or Medicaid or both. Of note, almost all nursing homes do participate. The site also describes resident characteristics including the percent of residents with bed sores, urinary incontinence and other ailments. There is summary information about how the nursing home did during their last state inspection. There is information on the number of registered nurses, licensed practical or vocational nurses, and nursing assistants in each nursing home.
In addition to checking nursing staff, you can find out about the nursing home including the number of beds and the type of ownership. For example, the report will indicate that San Simeon by the Sound has 150 certified beds, 96% of which are occupied, that the nursing home is both Medicare and Medicaid certified, that it is a non-profit church related facility and that it is not part of a multi-nursing home chain. You can also see what quality care deficiencies each nursing home has. They will indicate what inspectors determine the nursing home failed to do, what was the date of correction, the level of harm and even the number of residents who were effected by the deficiency.
It should be noted that there was some controversy regarding this list. A number of government officials felt that the list should not have been released and that it was not yet complete. However, for the typical lay person this list is invaluable. It will provide needed information when looking for a nursing home. As a caution, it will not replace an actual visit to a prospective nursing home. I myself refrain from making recommendations because I find that every family and every individual looks for something different when reviewing nursing homes. Some will be concerned about the size of the room, the view, the space in the closets, the type of food. I myself would look to the nature of the activity, the quality of medical care and of course, the amount of staff available, especially at nights and weekends. Recommendations are always helpful. But only after a personal visit can a decision be made as to whether that particular nursing home is the place where a loved one is to be admitted, possibly for the rest of their lives.
This list prepared by Medicare is simply a good starting place for the search to begin.
Reprinted with permission of the Suffolk Times © 2003
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I visited the website personally and found the information on the site fascinating. It was so fascinating that I printed out large samples of the website to the point where I actually broke my printer. However, the one section that I found particularly interesting was "number of nursing staff hours per resident per day". That section of the site gave the average number of the residents in the United States as 88.4 and in New York is 168.9. It also indicated that the average number of hours of registered nurses per day was 0.7 in the United States and 0.6 in New York. The total number of nursing staff hours per resident per day were 3.9 in the United States and 3.6 in New York. It then listed each of the nursing homes in New York and gave their average numbers. Many people ask me what to look for in a nursing home and although there are many different things to look at, one of the most important considerations is the amount of staff. If the nursing home is limited in staff, then obviously the services provided to the individual are going to be limited and the chances of something unfortunate happening to the patient increases.