Nursing Homes – Five-Star Rating System delivered to you by Elder Law Answers!
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Elders and Seniors in NJÂ can eat at a five star restaurant or stay at a five star hotel. By year’s end, you’ll also be able to select a five star nursing home.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced plans to implement a one  to five star rating system for nursing homes to help consumers in New Jersey evaluate a nursing home’s quality when selecting a facility. The ratings would appear on the agency’s Nursing Home Compare Web site.
CMS will base the ratings on government inspection results and the staff data and quality measures. It is yet to be determined – if the ratings will include patients with dementia or those on ventilators.
CMS Administrator Kerry Weems believes the public is hungry for this type of information. And he adds, “lower ratings will likely put nursing homes on the path to improvement . . . I don’t think we’re going to see many people who are very anxious to put a loved one in a one star home.”
But the new rating system was criticized both by consumer advocates and the nursing home industry, for different reasons.
A senior policy attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy, Toby Edelman, said that two of three criteria CMS plans to use for the ratings like staffing data and quality measures are “self reported by nursing facilities and are inaccurate.” Edelman said, “Relying on nursing homes to describe accurately how well they are doing . . . just doesn’t make sense”
The president of the American Health Care Association, Bruce Yarwood, a long term care industry trade group, criticized CMS’s use of government inspection results as criteria for the ratings and said CMS should consider consumer and staff satisfaction.
If you want your elder or senior living in New Jersey to continue living at home go to Expert Home Care and call us at 800-848-2336.
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