On February 20th, 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it was making changes to its Nursing Home Compare 5-Star Quality Rating system, which allows consumers to learn about and compare nursing homes in terms of their performance on surveys (inspections), staffing levels and quality measures. The following changes were made to the ratings, which are now updated on the 3.0 revisions www.medicare.gov website: – go to the Nursing Home Compare section.
The addition of 2 new antipsychotic quality measures – one for long stay, the other for short stay residents. Antipsychotic medication use had previously not been calculated into the rating;
Raising the bar for performance on quality measures through the increase of the number of total quality measure points needed to achieve each star rating:
The conduction of specialized onsite surveys of a sample of facilities nationwide to assess accuracy of the resident assessment information used to calculate quality measures;
The adjustment of how the number of stars awarded for staffing is determined. Up to this time, a facility could have 3 stars for RN staffing and 3 stars for total nursing staff hours and receive 4 stars for overall staffing. Under the new system, a facility must have at least 4 stars in either RN staffing or total nursing staff hours to be awarded 4 stars.
When selecting a nursing facility for a loved one consumers can check out the newly revised 5-Star Ratings on the Medicare website’s Nursing Home Compare to see how a facility measures up in terms of quality indicators or contact the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program at Areawide Aging Agency 942-8500 to discuss the rating of any nursing homes being considered for placement or any other questions you may have about a particular facility in Canadian, Cleveland, Logan or Oklahoma County.