CHENANGO COUNTY – An new, online comparison service that is designed to help families choose a nursing home for their loved ones gave facilities in Chenango County a wide range of scores.
The report, made available in late December on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website, rates the quality of care found in the nation’s 16,000 Medicare and/or Medicaid-certified nursing homes. The facilities are rated based on health inspection results, quality measures and staffing levels. An overall rating is also provided.
Chase Memorial Nursing Home New Berlin received a perfect score of five possible stars. Oxford’s New York State Veterans’ Home received 4 out of 5 and Valley View Manor Nursing Home in Norwich received 2 out of 5 stars.
Chenango Memorial Hospital and the Pearl and Everett Gilmour Health Care Facility faired poorly, however. Each received only one star on the U.S. government’s website.
Chase’s success is owed, in part, to the longevity of staff employment and an extremely low turnover rate, said Administrator Roger J. Halbert. Most management-level employees have been on staff for an average of 20-plus years. Halbert himself has worked at Chase for 37 years and said the facility’s food service manager and head of house keeping are both 35-year veterans.
Halbert also attributed the nursing home’s high rating to its special programs. He said that in 1992, the home began implementing the Eden Alternative program, which brought senior citizens in contact with children, pets and gardening and plants. The program become so popular it was adopted by other area nursing homes and was eventually made into an international program.
Yet Halbert was joined by officials at both Chenango Memorial Hospital and the Pearl and Everett Glimmer Health Care Facility in suggesting that the rating system has some bugs.
“The star rating does have its flaws. Some say it’s only a snap shot of a certain time when the health department is in and not an adequate overview of the entire operation,” he said.
According to the New York State Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, CMS’s ratings are based on subjective surveys periodically conducted by the state health department, inaccurate results from quality measures themselves, and shortcomings of the system used to report staffing levels.
Dan Heim, vice president for public policy at NYSAHS in Albany, said state health departments rate similar incidents differently in one area of the country than in another. He said CMS’ quality measures don’t make risk adjustments for the types of conditions patients have, and staffing reports don’t take into account temporary workers.
The ratings have resulted in “some serious mischaracterizations” of nursing home care and raised “some very serious concerns from groups like ours that represent homes,” said Heim.
The way the report card is tabulated is not reflective of the quality of care as much as it reflects they type of patients that Chenango Memorial Hospital services, said Chenango Memorial Hospital Chief Administrator Dr. Drake Lamen. Taking up most of its 89 beds on the second floor are mainly post operative and longer-stay patients who end up having higher complications, lack mobility, require catheters and have pressure ulcers – all things the report judges, Lamen said.
“We end up taking patients who have no place else to go. They finish their days in the nursing home,” he said.
“You always need to put it in to perspective. Certainly, if you were to judge the quality of care that patients received here, I’m sure the quality of care is better than one out of five. It’s not reflective of the quality of care.”
Chenango’s Nursing Home Administrator Ron Cerow said the report was released prematurely.
“It’s a good idea to give public information, but it has to be good information. We’re not there yet,” he said. “The system hasn’t found a way to measure people with heavy needs yet. They will have to in order to move forward.”
United Methodist Homes, operators of the Gilmour nursing home in Norwich, released the following statement: “Our reaction to our facilities’ results in the new rating system is in line with the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA), which has said the five-star rating system is ‘a great idea prematurely implemented.’ This rating system does not take into consideration how factors such as serving special populations can impact the overall picture of resident health at a facility. Residents with dementia and residents enrolled in hospice and palliative care programs experience decline as part of their disease processes, but we choose to provide these services because they are vital to the community. The new system is a good concept that has serious flaws, although future improvements in the five-star rating system may at some point make it a reliable determinant of quality,” President and CEO Keith Chadwick said.
“Any system when implemented over the whole industry like this is going to have flaws; indeed there is no perfect way to rate one home against another, but it this is an initial attempt and despite any effort to make it as good as possible I believe there will always be room for criticisms. It’s a good start, but it needs work,” said Halbert.
Heim said families looking for nursing homes for their loved ones should visit the facility and interact with the people providing care in order to make an informed decision.
“This is not like buying a toaster. Buying longterm care is a much more complex proposition. No rating system takes the place of a personal visit.”
Staff Writer Tyler Murphy contributed to this article.