Picking A Good Nursing Home…
Nearly 20 years ago, Congress passed a law designed to improve nursing homes.
But a new study by Consumer Reports finds that bad nursing home care is still widespread.
So, how do you find a good facility?
Trudy Lieberman, who heads the Center for Consumer Health Choices at Consumer's Union, visited The Early Show with numerous suggestions.
To see the segment,
For the fifth time since 2000, Consumer Reports is out with a list of facilities that rank as either the best or worst, going by its investigators' criteria for quality. They analyzed state inspection reports on 16,000 nursing homes across the country.
The Consumer Reports Nursing Home Quality Monitor, formerly called the Nursing Home Watch List, is well worth checking and is available to you for free.
To access that list, and a plethora of other resources on nursing homes, click here.
Lieberman points out that not-for-profit homes are more likely to provide good care than for-profits, "based on our analysis of inspection surveys, staffing, and quality indicators."
In addition, "Independently run homes are more likely to provide good care than chains."
Not-for-profit and independently owned nursing homes only represent a small portion of the industry, Lieberman notes. Since Medicaid was established in the 1960s, for-profit homes have proliferated and dominate the industry.