Friday, March 1, 2013

Federal Rating for Medicaid & Medicare Nursing Homes

You’ve probably noticed by now that we have 2 different types of ratings on local-nursing-homes.com- overall federal rating, and average user rating.  In late 2008, the federal government announced a new, 5-star rating system for all of the United States’ 15,800 nursing homes.  This marked the first time that these nursing homes were ever rated by the federal government.

Scoring for the rating system is based on information obtained from federal health inspection surveys, quality-of-care data, and staffing information.  In order for a nursing home to receive a 5-star rating all of the data must show that the nursing home is performing well above average; while conversely, a 1-star score indicates that a nursing home is performing well below average.

The initial scoring revealed the following:          

  • 66% of nursing homes received two to four stars 
  • 22% of nursing homes received just one star
  • 12% of nursing homes received five stars


More recent scoring from the 15,670 nursing homes in our database revealed the following:

  • 1 Star = 2,109 = 13.58%
  • 2 Star = 3,059 = 19.69%
  • 3 Star = 3,082 = 19.84%
  • 4 Star = 4,256 = 27.40%
  • 5 Star = 3,026 = 19.48%


Also, don’t use this information as the be-all, end-all for your nursing home search.  Check out user ratings.  Find out what the current residents of the nursing home have to say about their living conditions.
Below are the results of our 24,009 user ratings:

  • 1 Star = 10,545 = 43.92%
  • 2 Star =   2,033 =   8.47%
  • 3 Star =   1,248 =   5.20%
  • 4 Star =   1,935 =   8.06%
  • 5 Star =   8,248 = 34.35%


When looking into the overall rating of a nursing home, you would be well-advised to take this information into account.  Check out the overall federal score of each nursing home that you might be considering.  Then, break that down and find out why that nursing home received that specific score.  Is there not enough staff?  Are the facilities not well-maintained?  These are all important aspects that are reviewed during federal inspections.