Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare Site: A Place to Start
An article in the Washington Post about the launch of Medicare’s updated Nursing Home Compare Site yesterday really highlighted the challenges that people face when trying to find a facility. Not only is it a potentially emotional process from the perspective of making a decision on care for a person who is close to you, it can be extremely frustrating trying to parse the vague factors that will make a difference in terms of their quality of life.
We all want a Consumer Reports styled authority to point us to the best buy, and to some degree the Medicare site fulfills the need, unfortunately just as with Consumer Reports it’s difficult to make a five-star rating work for everything. The Medicare site only fails if you have the wrong expectations–that the data presented is all you’ll need to make a decision. It’s not.
Arguably, the site’s biggest failure is what will be the most appealing to users: the star ratings. Just like many things on the web, once you do a search you can sort the results. Why not sort the facilities on the overall rating and pick the best one? Because there are other factors that should be considered before winnowing your list. Another reason is that a facility may receive a lower star rating even though they’ve already address the issues cited.
That said, you can use Medicare’s site to learn more about the facilities in your area. Just be sure to spend time researching elsewhere.
Here are some other resources you may want to consider:
- AARP: Choosing a Nursing Home – A former industry insider offers 10 essential tips for selecting a home for a loved one
- Medicare’s Guide to Choosing a Nursing Home (PDF – look for it at the bottom of the page)
- Consumer Reports: Nursing Home Guide (note: it doesn’t appear that their Nursing Home Quality Monitor has been updated since August, 2006)
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[...] a little let down by the tools available. For instance, we posted recently on Medicare’s updated Nursing Home Compare Site, but even that we had to describe it merely as ‘a place to start’. Medicare’s [...]