Nursing Homes Rankings Worst 10

Families who are researching nursing home and care options for their elderly relatives need not look very far to find lists of nursing homes with low national rankings.

Consult with Elder Abuse Awareness Organizations that Publish Lists of the Worst Nursing Homes Annually

For example, the Assisted Senior Living watch list currently includes 145 elder care facilities that were given a ranking of less than one star based on a residents’ assessments of the following metrics, including:

• Patient and resident health
• Safety conditions of the facility
• Quality of nurse staffing care
• And other failures at basic quality measures.

Moreover, many of those facilities have also been cited for serious violations of administrative rules and state or federal guidelines for nursing homes. In the meantime, residents are forced to endure comparable conditions until investigators return again to the facility at a new date. A number of nursing home facilities nationally are closed or defunded by the state and federal government in order to force the offending entity out of business.

US News and World Reports on Worst Nursing Homes in America and Other Rankings Lists to Keep Elderly Individuals Informed

• US News and World Reports has aggregated data from Medicare’s Nursing Home Compare ranking to list elder care facilities in each state according to their overall rankings of one- to five-stars.

• The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services also maintains a Special Focus Facility (“SFF”) Initiative list of elder care and nursing home facilities that have received low rankings, and that are deemed to require extra attention due to the number and nature of violations they have received in a given period of time.

Some of the more egregious examples of elder abuse in nursing home facilities have been reported by national news sources:

• An 87-year old Alzheimer’s patient died in 2011 shortly after she took up residence at the Heartland Nursing Home in Charleston, West Virginia, after suffering from dehydration and malnutrition. The facility’s staff was deemed to be so inadequate that the patient did not even receive the barest amount of water in her nineteen-day stay at the facility before she passed away;

• In 2012, an elderly woman died less than six months after she began residing at the Kingstree Nursing Facility in Kingstree, South Carolina. That facility had received a higher ranking at the time, but when the patient died she was covered in bruises and had suffered a broken hip.
• The staff at an Arkansas nursing home ignored a 76-year old patient’s complaints of abdominal pain and failed to transfer her to an emergency room for treatment of that pain. The patient died shortly thereafter.

How to Determine if a Nursing Home Is Safe for Prospective Residents?

 There are no litmus tests or hard and fast rules that can be used to determine if an elder care or nursing home facility will provide the quality of care needed or if it will fall far short of providing that care. The published rankings and lists are a good starting point for any research. After one or more facilities have been identified, the following matters should be considered:

• Does the facility have a history of reported violations?
• How many severe violations have been reported against the facility?
• What is the level of employment turnover among the staff?
• Are the residents allowed any level of independence?
• What does your gut instinct tell you?

A history of reported violations and particularly of severe violations is not a good sign in any situation. By some estimates, more than 90% of all elder care facilities have been cited for one or more violations. A look for a pattern of the same type of violation or a long history of different violations over a stretch of time.

Poorly managed nursing facilities frequently have a high turnover level among their staffs. Experienced nursing care professionals will stay away from facilities that do not provide support or services to allow them to give proper support to residents, leaving less experienced and less conscientious employees to carry the burden of caring for a large resident population. The worst facilities will also confine their residents to their rooms or beds for long stretches of time.

Legal Counsel Can Help in A Number of Ways

An attorney who concentrates his practice on elder law issues will be able to help you find this information if you are unable to uncover it yourself. Elder law attorneys have access to information and databases on reported violations, lawsuits that have been filed against nursing homes, and industry information on trends for elder care facilities. Consulting with an elder care attorney before you make your decision is a sound strategy for avoiding the worst of the thousands of elder care facilities that are in operation.

References:

http://health.usnews.com/best-nursing-homes

http://www.helpguide.org/articles/senior-housing/guide-to-nursing-homes.htm

https://www.medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare/About/What-Is-NHC.html

http://www.assistedseniorliving.net/nursing-homes/worst-watchlist/

http://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/2014/05/07/5-traits-of-the-worst-nursing-homes

https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Provider-Enrollment-and-Certification/CertificationandComplianc/downloads/sfflist.pdf