Nursing Home Compare: Is Your Elder Care Facility Up to Par?

Finding the right nursing home in Georgia for a loved one can be an exhausting task for even the most diligent family members. There are so many factors to consider and so many worries to overcome. Facilities that appear to be perfect on the outside may be staffed by uncaring and negligent nurses and aides, while friendly staff could be masking an unclean and unsafe environment. What is a conscientious person to do?

Ratings from Nursing Home Compare

One resource for families searching for the right nursing home is the government’s Nursing Home Compare website. This website, a five-star ratings system maintained by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is controversial but still a good start for families seeking a long-term care facility.

What will you learn about Georgia nursing homes from this website? You may be surprised to find out that nearly half of the 359 nursing homes in Georgia rate only one or two stars according to the five-star rating system.

The overall five-star rating for each home is based on three factors:

• Health Inspections: Health inspectors evaluate the care of residents, process of care, staff and resident interactions, and the home’s environment about once a year. Data from the last three standard health inspections is combined with all complaint inspections from the last three years to determine this rating.
• Nursing Home Staffing: Self-reported information from the nursing home gathered during the most recent health inspection. Includes data about overall staffing hours for nurses and nursing assistants. This rating is derived from a calculation of staff hours per resident per day, case-mix adjusted to ensure that different levels of resident need are taken into account.
• Quality Measures: Also self-reported by the nursing homes, this rating is derived from data that homes routinely collect on all residents at specified times. A subset of nineteen quality measures is used to calculate this rating.

The Nursing Home Compare ratings also include information on whether or not the home accepts Medicare and Medicaid, the number of certified Medicare / Medicaid beds in the home, and the type of ownership (i.e. for-profit, not-for-profit, corporation, partnership, or government).

While some critics complain that the five-star rating system is rudimentary and can be misleading, the website offers a snapshot of available homes in Georgia. Users can also narrow a search down to towns, cities, and counties offering a quick and easy way to start the search for a new home.

No matter how much hard work you put into finding just the right Georgia nursing home, the worst can always happen. If you need assistance with a suspected case of nursing home abuse or neglect, please contact the Atlanta based attorneys at Kaufman Law today.

Kaufman Law, P.C.

12 Beck Street, N.W.

Atlanta, GA. 30318

Toll Free: (888) 973-2540

Phone: (404) 355-4000