Analysis of 5 Star Rating System by Nursing home Abuse Attorney

 

Nursing Home 5 Star Rating System:

Moving our elders into a care facility is a difficult decision to take. It becomes even more complicated when we have to choose the best Elder Care facility for our loved ones. As research and choose the best care facility is a very time-consuming process. To overcome this problem, CMS (Center for Medicare services) launched Nursing Home 5- Star Rating System to evaluate Nursing Homes based on health inspections, quality measures, and staffing. The Nursing Facility has to record all the events occurred in the facility whether it’s positive or negative. Facility will gain the star with each positive event or lose with the bad one. Higher the rating, better the facility is.

How Facilities are fooling the Rating System:

This 5-star rating system is far from perfect. As, Nursing Home submit the records by themselves and State authorities doesn’t even verify the reliability of the recorded data, so Nursing homes have the charge to modify their ratings.

As staffing and quality measures data is self-reported by nursing homes and also doesn’t verify by the govt. These ratings also don’t record in account state fines. Nursing Homes have learned how to game this system to improve the ratings.

Another important factor in determining the nursing homes is reporting of major injuries. If a nursing home resident falls and results into an injury, it will be an indication of poor care and will be reported under a “quality measure.” Such accidents are not common in better-staffed and better-managed facilities. Though a facility can game the Nursing Home 5-Star Rating System, by not reporting such injuries to the state, it will not verify the records too. Whereas, social Platforms like Facebook, Google, Yelp, etc. allow users to review individual nursing homes but most of the time these reviews aren’t taken seriously. Thus, all the star rating is biased. A team of researchers evaluated reviews on Yelp and found that users have different aspects to rate nursing homes than the official rating system. If we talk about user’s review, all of their reviews were on staff’s attitude and behavior while rating system took accounts on self reported quality measures by the facility. As, Star rating is the basis of resident admission for many families and loved one’s of the elder’s loved ones, we need to correct this formula. So, residents can hear and act upon the best one.

In my point of view to avoid Sacramento Elder abuse, all the reviews from residents, facility staff and authorities must be recorded equally and after verification of all the reviews, the star rating need to be assigned.

In a Recent study at the University of Chicago, based on the data from 2011-2015, discovered that lots of nursing facilities don’t even bother reporting falls. According to 5 Star Rating System, if an accident occurs in a nursing home resulting in significant injuries get reported to CMS, facility will lose the rating star. So, Nursing Homes are avoiding updates in CMS because if there will be no accidents their ratings remain the same or go up. There aren’t enough public health inspectors available to track facility reporting, so the government data is mainly based upon nursing home self-reports.  

How to select an Elder Care Facility for your Loved One:

Now, the question arises if these facilities are gaming the rating system then how will people select a nursing home for their loved ones? Well, It is a time-consuming task but you have to do the research yourself before selecting a care facility for your loved ones. Following are points you should check regarding an elder care facility

• Location and Space: 

  It will be a wise decision to move your loved one to the nearby  eldercare facility to visit them frequently. Other important factor we should consider is space. Check if the facility has enough space to walk around and well maintained rooms.

• Services:    

Always choose the facility that meets all of your requirements. Visit the facility during      mealtime to know more about them. Observe the staff if they’re helping residents or patients in eating and drinking or not.  Check if they’re serving healthy meals to residents or not. Rooms should be well cleaned and sanitized to avoid any kind of infection. You can also check the hygiene of other patients.

• Check the Staff: 

Lack of staff is the most common complaint regarding elder care facilities. So, before choosing a facility, check if they have enough staff members for taking care of all the patients in the facility. Lack of staff may result in neglect and abandonment of some patients in the elder care facility. Also check their behavior, professionalism, and expertise. Observe if they are polite towards every patient or not. After all, our family member is going under the direct care of a facility.

• Security of Patients: 

 Ask about the facility’s policy regarding female patients. What measures facility takes against abuse? If your loved one is suffering from Dementia, ask if staff is trained to handle the dementia patients. Do research for the facility’s medication policy on psychotic drugs, to know if other residents are overmedicated or unable to walk or talk.

To conclude, Our Nursing Home Abuse Attorneys say that 5 Star Rating System is right idea to let the residents or their families know about the services of elder care facility. But, it has many drawbacks of self evaluation or lack of verification that can be checked for better evaluation of the facility on realistic parameters.