USA Today (12/18, Appleby, Sternberg, et al.) reports that the "Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) scored nearly 16,000 nursing homes for the first time," rating them on a five-star scale. "Nursing homes face daunting challenges: finding and keeping staff, caring for frail patients, complying with a host of federal and state rules, and doing it all under financial constraints imposed by limited government payments that vary from state to state." Accordingly, "quality varies widely among individual homes and among states." For instance, "in 14 states, residents choosing a home randomly have a more than 25 percent chance of picking a nursing home that, overall, rates one star, the lowest ranking on Medicare's new system."
But "the industry is" already "questioning the validity of the rankings," according to the AP (12/18, Freking). "To operators, the five-star system [is] a great idea whose time has not yet come," and some "worry about the ramifications for their business if they get one or two stars."
CMS officials, however, "say the rating system aims to spur improvement at homes by providing the public with information about a home's quality, staffing, and performance over time," the Arizona Republic (12/18, Alltucker, Wynn, et al.) adds. Taking a closer look at the ratings, the Republic reports that, "in Arizona, 19 nursing homes secured the government's top five-star rating," which "amounts to about 14 percent of the homes, or slightly better than the national average of 12 percent."
In Michigan, "more than one in five of [the state's] 417 nursing homes received failing grades for good care," the Detroit Free Press (12/17, Anstett) reported. Meanwhile, The Tennessean (12/18, Stults) notes that 30 "percent of Tennessee nursing homes" also received "the worst possible rating in a new federal report released...giving the state a more dismal showing than almost every other state in the nation," excluding Georgia and Louisiana. In fact, the "Twin Cities" of Louisiana "are home to some of the state's lowest-performing nursing homes," the Monroe (LA) News Star (12/18, Largen) adds. The Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle (12/18, Wang), the North Carolina News & Observer (12/18, Goldsmith), Indiana's Journal and Courier (12/18, Schneider), and Florida's News-Press (12/18, Reed) cover their local rankings.
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