New gov't rating system unveiled for nursing homes

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services updated its web site on Thursday using a five-star rating system to rank institutions nationwide.

The ratings are based on state inspections, staffing levels and quality measures, such as the percentage of residents with pressure sores, the Washington Post reported The nursing homes will receive stars for each of those categories as well as for their overall quality.

"The old site had a lot of information, but the information wasn't necessarily terribly usable by the average consumer. You knew if the facility was above or below the state average, but you didn't know what that meant," said Charles Phillips, a professor of health policy and management at Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, in College Station.

"What you have with the five-star system is a very well-thought-out way of summarizing all of that information that was available on t he earlier site with new information. This allows you to do a much more direct comparison in a user-friendly way."

Phillips who served on the advisory panel that developed the rating system said roughly 10 percent of the facilities have five stars and roughly 20 percent have one star.

The National Citizen's Coalition for Nursing Home Reform issued a statement saying it is "fully aware of the shortcomings of the rating system," but it would still support it as an important educational tool.

However the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging was more critical of the new effort.

"The five-star rating system is a great idea prematurely implemented. What is being launched is poorly planned, prematurely implemented and ham-handedly rolled out," Larry Minnix, president and CEO of the association said in a statement.

Federal officials say the rankings will put nursing homes "on the path to improvement" because they know family members will think twice before putting someone in a one-star home.

Consumer groups like the concept, but they agreed there are some potential problems with the data. For example, the staffing data is self-reported just before state surveys and is widely recognized as unreliable.