CINCINNATI -- People sometimes spend months choosing a home or a car, carefully researching before making a decision. But when it comes to nursing homes, often an emergency placement demands much quicker decision-making.
That's why the federal government came up with a much-publicized rating system supposed to help us compare nursing homes. It’s Called the “Nursing Home Compare” system. Consumers can browse a web site listing every nursing home in the country, county by county.
Now the I-Team's found that system may be flawed, impacting decisions consumers are making.
WCPO-TV and the Scripps Howard News Service combined for a statistical analysis of the site, Uncle Sam's first-ever ratings of almost 16,000 nursing homes across the nation. Our analysis included all 146 nursing homes in the Tri-State region including Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana.
We found some over-riding themes that show uneven quality of care at nursing homes. But we also found the rating system itself to be of questionable quality.
We toured homes the government had rated at the top of the scale and at the bottom.
Search databases summarizing the most recent federal reports for licensed nursing homes receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds and ratings on the last page of this story.
Archbishop Leibold Home, run by Little Sisters of the Poor, sits in a 140-year-old building in Clifton, in Hamilton County. The residents to whom we talked couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s clean, features two-room suites for all residents, has a coffee shop, large meeting space, and many classes and activities.
Cedar Village in Mason, in Warren County, is practically new, built in 1997. It also is immaculate with beautiful common areas, a bird sactuary, private and shared rooms, and a gift shop and deli with a resort feel. Residents to whom we spoke also said they loved living there.
Both homes feature lovely dining rooms, tasty food, a chapel (two synagogues for Cedar Village) and much more.
The government gave Leibold its top score, a 5. It ranks Cedar Village at the bottom, with a 1.
Cedar Village’s CEO and President Carol Silver Elliott says the home noticed that some of the data entry on the government’s site is incorrect. She says there is no mechanism to appeal to correct the misinformation. "The numbers are only as good as the data. It's a flawed system," she says.
Some local experts who work on behalf of seniors agree.
Mary Day is the regional obmbusman program director for Pro Seniors, which monitors all local nursing homes and advises families how to choose the one for them. She says, "I really hesitate to put too much faith in any rating. I think the tendency for all individuals is to go for the rating and to oversimplify the process. No rating can acurately represent the status of a facility today."
Day says Uncle Sam’s survey may be measuring compliance with government regulations more than true quality. She's shocked Cedar Village and several other homes in our region rank only "1" on the government survey.
But our investigation explains part of the issue. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services docks homes for patients with wounds or using higher levels of medical equipment. That drops your score.
