Nursing homes

Skilled Nursing Services Payment System – from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, (MedPAC), an independent congressional agency established which advises Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program. This fact sheet can help reporters understand how MEDPAC defines, and pays for, skilled nursing services in both short and long-term care facilities. (updated October 2022).

Latest Data on Nursing Home Staffing Levels and Poorly Performing Nursing Homes – from the Long Term Community Care Coalition 2017Q4 data provides tables for every state that include, for each facility in the state that has reported), the facility’s resident population; its RN, LPN, and CNA care staffing levels; and the amount of care staff hours per resident day (HPRD) for both all care staff and for RNs specifically. Individual state files can be downloaded and are easily sortable, I.e., to identify by state which facilities have the highest reported levels of RN care and which have the lowest.

National Partnership to Improve Dementia Care in Nursing Homes’ April 2018 report provides a long-term view of antipsychotic medication use: in 2011Q4, 23.9 percent of long-stay nursing home residents were receiving antipsychotic medication; since then, there has been a decrease of 36.6 percent to a national prevalence of 15.1 percent in 2017Q4. Success has varied by state and CMS region, with some states and regions having a decrease of greater than 40 percent. The CMS report is found on this page, in the box headlined “Related Links.”According to LeadingAge, the association for nonprofit providers of aging services (including, but not limited to, nursing homes), points out that nursing home leadership at skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) across the country have developed approaches to decrease the use of antipsychotics.

PHI Report: Raise the Floor: Quality Nursing Home Care Depends on Quality Jobs (April 2016) According to the report, Low Pay and inadequate training of CNAs Are Creating a Care Crisis in nursing homes while demand increases. (note that PHI Policyworks is an advocacy group working to strengthen the direct-care workforce

AHRQ’s Nursing Home Survey on Patient Safety Culture: 2014 Comparative Database Report is available for download. The report compares patient safety culture in 263 U.S. nursing homes and 18,968 staff. The report also presents results by various nursing home characteristics (size and ownership) and respondent characteristics (job titles, work areas, direct patient contact, shift worked and tenure in nursing home). The report presents statistics, including averages, standard deviations, minimum and maximum scores and percentiles, on the patient safety culture composites and items from the survey.

Find or compare a nursing home at Medicare.gov. Get the data in spreadsheet format from AHCJ. CMS also releases a list of “special-focus facilities” that have longstanding quality issues.

Consumer Reports has long offered useful information on nursing homes. Its report, “Why the Fed’s Web Site Falls Short,” September 2006, is available here. CR also created a “Nursing Home Quality Monitor,” which is available online as a clickable state map.

AARP offers a host of information, including this guide to state sources of nursing home performance data.

State’s quality care information can be found in this guide to State Website Information About Nursing Homes. You can generally find up-to-date contact information and links to websites for the licensing and certification agency in your state.

Regulatory agencies

Consumer organizations

Other sources