Changes for Nursing Home Rating Standards

The federal government recently announced changes to its procedure in rating nursing homes, making it more difficult to earn four and five star ratings. 

The previous system rated nursing homes on a one to five star scale and relied heavily on unverified information that resulted in poor nursing homes receiving top marks.  Two of the three major criteria used in the previous ratings system—quality measure statistics and staffing levels—were self-reported by the nursing homes and not audited by the government. 

Last October, the government announced that nursing homes would be required to submit their staff levels quarterly through a system that could verify their claims through payroll data.  It also announced that it would initiate a nationwide auditing program geared toward checking quality measure statistics. 

See Bonnie Kraham, Bonnie Kraham: Rating Standards Increased for Nursing Homes, The Times Herald, March 11, 2015.