A new study has made a glaring exposure about the nursing homes in the United States. According to the researchers, many of them have failed to meet the scrupulous medical standards that were recently set for ensuring safety and qualitative care for the patients.
The study showed that approximately a third of the country’s nursing homes are receiving lower scores on the five-star quality scale set by the government. This reflects the tougher ratings standards used by around 1.5 million consumers for assessing medical care at over 15,000 facilities nationwide.
Some of the factors studied before rating the nursing homes include use of anti-psychotic drugs facilities, especially by the elderly people suffering dementia, and checking for adequate staffing, which is a crucial as well as critical component of good care.
About 60 percent of all nursing homes received lower quality-of-care scores in the latest changes, but the drops were not very dramatic in most of the cases that could have affected the overall rating of the facility.
Nearly 28 percent of nursing homes declined one star in their overall ratings, including over 1,200 that lost the five-star status. About three percent of facilities lost two stars.
Dr. Patrick Conway, chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, “You do need to raise the bar. That’s not going to incentivize the same level of improvement.”
The new ratings are the result of the remarkable modification in the way medical facilities are evaluated,
In 2014, nearly 1.4 million people closely followed the Nursing Home Compare website in order to help check facility ratings.
These scores are used by the nursing homes to determine their stature as well as performance in offering safety to the patients. The medical centers with high ratings often include them into marketing materials.
“We are not assisting patients and their families get the information they can trust when the star rankings fail to meet the quality care being delivered,” said American Health Care Association chief executive Mark Parkinson.
American Health Care Association is a trade group related to for-profit nursing home.
The new findings were posted on Friday on the Nursing Home Compare website of the government.
