Government's 5-star rating system for nursing homes

by ElderCarelink

Nearly as difficult as the choice to move your parent or loved one into a nursing home is the choice of which one. Fortunately, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has put together a checklist, a guide and a rating system to help you make the best decision.

 They first recommend finding a nursing home in your area. This just makes sense. You'll undoubtedly want to visit beforehand to check the place out as well as when your parent or loved one is staying there, so make it easy. Once you've got a list of homes, comparing them can be tough. This is where CMS's rating system comes into play.

 They've taken the time to rate nursing homes on a variety of carefully chosen criteria, including:

 1. Health inspection. This list contains about 180 individual sections, breaking down all major aspects of care in nursing homes. The CMS sends trained staff to every location to make objective reports of facilities, and the reports are checked at the federal level to ensure quality standards.

 2. Staffing. There's more to a staffing rating than a ratio of staff to residents. Taking into account the need for and number of trained nurses on staff, these yearly reports take two weeks for each facility to complete. The CMS recommends asking about staff turnover and any qualifications the staff might have beyond (very necessary) nursing certifications.

 3. Quality measures. This is an in-depth look at how well nursing homes perform on ten fairly common and very important aspects of senior care. Included in these ten points are how the staff helps residents stay able to eat and dress themselves, and how the staff deals with the treatment and prevention of skin ulcers.

 The necessity for you to go in, see for yourself, talk with the staff, ask your parent or loved one's doctor and make the decision yourself is stressed, as is their recommendation to use this rating system with other information. In short, it's best for everyone if you gather as much information as possible before check in.