Sunday, July 21, 2013

Another Resource for Researching Nursing Homes



Every morning I have a sequence of websites I like to peruse before getting started with my day. I don’t think I am unique in this practice and I like to think of it as the2013 version of reading a newspaper. I will almost always go to a news site (both local and national) and my favorite sports blog. Then on some days I might also check out an entertainment site, checking in on a few favorite blogs of interest and, on Fridays, look at any reviews for movies I’m interested in. Thus I have hit the “front page”, the “sports” page, the “entertainment page”, the “op-ed” and the “movie reviews.” I’m not suggesting ProPublica should be added to your stable of regularly rounded websites, but I do think it’s worth checking in on everyone once in a while, depending on your needs/interest.


In a previous post I discussed the enforcement mechanisms put in place by the Nursing Home Reform Act to improve the administration of care in nursing homes, including the performance of annual and complaint surveys of nursing homes in each state. Additionally I provided various links to look up nursing homes and see how they fared in recent surveys. Whether you’re an attorney dealing with a nursing home, an individual researching potential nursing homes to utilize, or are concerned about the care being provided to a loved one currently in a nursing home, ProPublica is another very useful resource to review the quality of nursing homes.


By way of background, ProPublica was formed in 2007 as an online news source of investigative journalism in the “public interest.” Over time it has won a number of journalism awards, some of which were awarded for the first time to an online news source. While ProPublica covers the gamut of news it deems in the public interest, of particular interest for purposes of this blog is the work it’s doing on nursing homes.


In August 2012, ProPublica published a story about nursing homes and with it launched Nursing Home Inspect. According to ProPublica, the inspection tool improved on the search capabilities of the Federal Government’s nursing home website. Over time ProPublica has made improvements to its application, including frequent updates to the raw data upon which the application searches. Then in December 2012, ProPublica made significant enhancements to the application which, among other things, allowed “users to easily compare the nursing homes in each state in a variety of areas: the number of deficiencies cited by regulators in the past three inspection cycles (roughly three years); the number of serious deficiencies per home (that is, deficiencies in which patients were put at immediate jeopardy of harm); the amount of fines imposed; and how often the government has suspended payments to the home for new patients, another type of penalty.” Then just in the last month (June 20th), ProPublica has once again updated the raw data for the application (the raw data is available to be downloaded if desired).


I encourage you to go to the site and check out all of the types of information you can learn about a particular nursing home or the nursing homes in a particular area. And while you might not check it out on a daily basis, most of us at some point in the future are going to have someone we care about in a nursing home and this an excellent resource investigating prospective facilities.


-Ryan

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