Tag Archives: ratings

New ratings say only modest proportion of nursing homes are high performers

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Photo: Josh Rushing via Flickr

Fewer than 20% of nursing homes in the U.S. are considered “best” under a revamped analysis from U.S. News and World Report, which is out with its 2019-20 ratings on Tuesday.

Ratings are provided for homes in every state and nearly 100 major metropolitan areas. California tops the list, with 169 nursing homes receiving a “high performing” rating in short-term rehabilitation and 157 “high performing” homes in long-term care, followed by Pennsylvania and Florida. Hawaii, Alaska and Washington, D.C., have the highest proportion of “best nursing homes,” with at least half of all Medicare or Medicaid-certified nursing facilities in these states receiving a high-performing designation in either short-term rehabilitation or long-term care or both. Continue reading →

Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist based in New York’s Hudson Valley, who writes about caregiving, dementia, access to care, nursing homes and policy in her role as AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for Aging. Seegert helps provide context for reporting on this multidimensional issue with story posts, tip sheets, analysis, data and one-on-one interviews with aging experts.

Where have all the patient safety activists gone? … Answer: They’re still around, just a bit quieter

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Today, Sept. 17, is the first World Patient Safety Day, declared by the World Health Organization to draw attention to ever-present need – still – to reduce avoidable patient harm in health care settings.

And November marks the 20th anniversary of “To Err is Human,” the National Academy of Medicine’s 1999 report that estimated as many as 98,000 people die a year in United States hospitals. That widely publicized report called for a national agenda to improve patient care processes to make it easier for honest providers to safely treat patients and harder for them to cause harm. Continue reading →

Cheryl Clark (@CherClarHealth) is a MedPage Today contributor and inewsource.org investigative journalist. For most of 27 years, she covered medicine and science for the San Diego Union-Tribune. After taking a buyout in 2008, she became senior quality editor for HealthLeaders Media.

Crowdsource the right nursing home for a loved one? It’s a thing

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Photo: Brian Walker via Flickr

Caregivers seeking a long-term facility for their loved ones often have little idea about how to evaluate certain issues that can’t be easily quantified. Are the aides kind and attentive? Do residents easily make friends? Are calls and queries handled promptly and efficiently? Will Mom or Dad really be OK?

Enter crowdsourcing. Continue reading →

Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist based in New York’s Hudson Valley, who writes about caregiving, dementia, access to care, nursing homes and policy in her role as AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for Aging. Seegert helps provide context for reporting on this multidimensional issue with story posts, tip sheets, analysis, data and one-on-one interviews with aging experts.

Consumer site taps data to estimate which states have healthiest teeth and gums

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Photo: Jamie Henderson via Flickr

A state’s oral health status represents an interesting indicator of the overall health and economic well-being of its people. On a personal and population level, oral health is not achieved in a vacuum.

Many factors play a role in ensuring the good oral health, from the availability and cost of professional dental services to access to nutritious food and optimally fluoridated water. Shortages of dental providers, high rates of smoking and sugar-sweetened beverage consumption can take a toll. So, can the lack public or private dental benefits, water fluoridation and school sealant programs. Continue reading →

Mary Otto, a Washington, D.C.-based freelancer, is the author of "Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America."

Hospice tip sheet offers pointers on data analysis, story ideas

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Photo: PJ Johnson via Flickr

Updated hospice compare data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) had been slated for release on Nov. 21 but was delayed due to what CMS has described as “technical problems.”

Whether you use previous data or analyze forthcoming statistics, what these federal quality measures do not show is just as important as what they do, according to a new AHCJ tip sheet by journalist Cheryl Clark. Continue reading →

Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist based in New York’s Hudson Valley, who writes about caregiving, dementia, access to care, nursing homes and policy in her role as AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for Aging. Seegert helps provide context for reporting on this multidimensional issue with story posts, tip sheets, analysis, data and one-on-one interviews with aging experts.