Almost a quarter of all nursing homes in New York received low ratings for their overall safety and quality of care, data released by a patient advocacy group shows.
Approximately 135 of the state’s 600 nursing homes statewide are so-called “problem facilities,” meaning that they scored the lowest possible rating for things like staffing, health inspections and quality measures, according to an analysis of federal data released last week by the Long Term Community Care Coalition, a Midtown-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of nursing home residents.
New York’s problem facilities include three “special focus facilities,” which are nursing homes placed into a federal oversight program because of serious quality and safety issues, according to the data. The data comes from metrics that nursing homes provide to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The state’s percentage of problem facilities is consistent with the nationwide rate of about 25%, the data shows. Still, the number of low-rated nursing homes poses challenges for residents and families to access high-quality care, said Richard Mollot, executive director of the coalition.
Trends around safety and quality within the nursing home industry come as more nursing homes have been bought by for-profit entities, Mollot added. Approximately 80% of New York nursing homes flagged for quality and safety issues were owned by for-profit companies, higher than the 66% of for-profit facilities overall.
“These are really the facilities that are at the bottom of the barrel,” Mollot said. The fact that roughly one in four nursing homes performs poorly on safety and quality standards creates challenges for families hoping to quickly place their loved ones in facilities that are safe and offer adequate care, he added. “Who is going to take you in?”
The nursing home industry rejected claims that the percentage of facilities with low ratings indicates poor access to care. The federal government’s ratings system scores facilities based on how they compare to one another, meaning that a certain percentage of nursing homes will always get low ratings, according to Tarrah Quinlan, director of education program development at the New York State Health Facilities Association, an industry group that represents nursing homes and other medical facilities.
Quinlan added that the data used to score nursing homes is collected on a lag due to inspection delays among state and federal health officials, and that those delays offer a misleading picture of safety and quality in real-time.
The Long Term Community Care Coalition, founded in 1989, puts together quarterly reports on nursing home staffing, inspections and quality of care metrics. The nonprofit’s recent data analysis used a new methodology to score nursing home ratings that deviates from the typical federal ratings system, as it takes into account whether nursing homes meet federal staffing mandates.
