A family member needs to go into a nursing home for short- or long-term care, but you have little time to pick a place and even less emotional energy to comparison-shop. And yet the decision can be life-altering for the person who is ill and the ones who guide the process.
Maryland residents, for the second year in a row, can turn to a state Web site to learn about options and to find out which nursing homes have been ranked by patients' family members or others as having high-quality care and which came up short.
The Maryland Health Care Commission recently released its 2008 Maryland Nursing Home Family Experience of Care Survey, which rates about 235 nursing homes and continuing-care facilities based on the observations of family members or others designated by patients.
Maryland is one of a handful of states that collect and publish the information, said Bruce Kozlowksi, head of the commission's Center for Long-Term Care and Community-Based Services.
"The commission is very oriented to public information and the availability of public information," he said. "That is a big part of our mission."
The nursing-home report scores facilities on the quality of the staff and the administration, the physical condition of the facility, the quality of care and food and whether residents' rights and autonomy are being managed as promised. The report said that 89 percent of those responding would recommend particular nursing homes to others, a slight increase over the previous year's report. The average score for overall care received was 8.2 out of 10, unchanged from 2007.
"There is substantial variation across nursing homes," Rex Cowdry, the commission's executive director, said in a statement.
"One of our major goals in public reporting is to encourage improvements in care, particularly in nursing homes with lower scores," he said.
Smaller nursing homes, those with 80 beds or fewer, had the highest overall ratings, receiving scores of 8.8 out of a possible 10. They were followed by nonprofit homes and homes in the western section of Maryland, which were rated 8.6.
Kozlowski said the anonymity of the survey responses is a key factor in encouraging honest answers from family members or others who fill out the forms. The commission mailed 17,000 surveys in the fall and received about 9,000 responses, he said.
The commission expects to expand its surveys and data gathering in the next few years, and will seek opinions on short stays in rehabilitation facilities, as well as home health care and assisted-living facilities.
"We want to make more and more information available to Marylanders to benefit them in the context of their health-care choices," Kozlowksi said.
To see the nursing home survey results and other available tools, go to: http://www.mhcc.maryland.gov and click on "Consumers," "Nursing Home Guide" and "2008 Family Survey."
COLUMBUS - Ohio's nursing home industry, traditionally one of the most generous in the state when it comes to political donations, scored a lucrative victory in the revised budget that House Democrats proposed this week.
Extra money for nursing homes in the House budget makes them eligible for more federal money, negating a large fee increase the governor had proposed in his earlier budget - all for an industry that has lavished political donations in recent years, records show.
The House plan adds $33.5 million in new state money to the $40 million Gov. Ted Strickland had budgeted for nursing homes' capital expenditures. That extra money qualifies nursing homes for about $160 million in new federal Medicaid funds.
Strickland, a Democrat, had proposed raising the bed tax that nursing homes pay from $6.25 a day to $11 a day. The increase would have brought in $285.1 million for the state.
All that additional money in the House proposal for nursing homes all but offsets Stickland's bed tax increase.
House Speaker Armond Budish, an attorney who helped consumers navigate the nursing home system before being elected, defended the House's treatment of the industry.
"I have worked with families, people who are in need of long-term care for well over 20 years, and I recognize the important services that our parents and grandparents need and receive in long-term care facilities," Budish said. "The cuts that were initially proposed would have been devastating to the care that those people receive."
An industry estimate found that the fees Strickland proposed would have jeopardized 2,000 jobs at Ohio nursing homes.
"The House budget shows true concern for the people we serve," said Victoria Gresh, executive director of the Ohio Academy of Nursing Homes.
State campaign finance filings show that the industry has given generously to both legislative chambers heading into the debate over the $53 billion state budget.
Nursing home interests donated $72,000 to Budish last year. The Skilled Nursing Care Coalition donated $25,000 to the Ohio Democratic Building Fund, whose lobbyist is Budish's friend and political adviser Alan Melamed.
In the Senate, President Bill Harris has received $10,000 since 2007 from executives of one of the state's largest nursing home companies, Carrington Health Systems. Nursing home executives, associations and political action committees have also given other key senators - including former House Speaker Jon Husted, Senate Finance Chairman John Carey and members of Harris' leadership team - at least $77,500 since 2007.
In Ohio, donations in the thousands of dollars are unique for politicians at the state level.
Gayle Channing Tenenbaum, who helps run a coalition of poverty-fighting groups, the Campaign to Protect Ohio's Future, said the House's budget takes money from other basic needs.
"It seems to me people made decisions that one population is more important than another population," she said. "That's not what we should be doing when it comes to any vulnerable population. Abused and neglected children are a very vulnerable population, hungry children are a very vulnerable population, and elderly people in need to adult protective services in their communities are also a very vulnerable population."
Already Wednesday, nursing homes had turned to the Republican-led Senate for more cash.
Peter Van Runkle, executive director of the nursing home-backed Ohio Health Care Association, said hundreds of nursing homes would lose state funding even under the House budget.
"There is still a lot of work to be done in the Senate," he said.
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Apr 23, 2009 9:17 am US/Central
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