State surveys show where nursing homes excel, fall short
Families worried about recent reports questioning the quality of some of Ohio’s nursing homes and other longterm-care centers might want to check out the resident and family satisfaction surveys on the state’s online shopping guide. With the click of a mouse, people can learn such
details as whether residents feel confident that the staff is knowledgeable about their medical conditions, whether family members feel they know what is going on with their loved ones, and whether their concerns are quickly addressed.
“In the age of Yelp, most of us don’t visit restaurants without first looking up their review,” said Kathryn Brod, president and CEO of LeadingAge Ohio, a trade group of nonprofit nursing homes and other senior-service providers.
People do similar online research before making an investment or buying a car or just about any other good or service, she said. So, she asked, why wouldn’t they do the same before deciding what nursing home or assisted-living facility best meets their relative’s needs?
Instead of just having to rely on random reviews, the surveys were crafted by researchers at the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University under a contract with the Ohio Department of Aging. The surveys are done on alternating years and were created with input from consumer and industry groups. They include questions in seven areas: care and services, environment, facility culture, how time is spent, meals, quality of the caregivers, and whether a facility provides enough information and is helpful when a resident moves in.
Only a handful of states do something similar, said Jane Straker, director of research at Scripps. “Ohio is a leader in this area,” she said, adding that the costs are covered by a fee to nursing homes and residential care facilities.
The federal government has a five-star quality rating system for nursing homes and a website (www.medicare. gov/nursinghomecompare) where people can compare facilities. But the Government Accountability Office recently suggested that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services add resident satisfaction ratings so families have more information and can make better choices.
In addition to the surveys, the Ohio guide —www.ltc. ohio.gov — also includes state health inspection results and information about available services and accepted payment methods at each of the facilities.
“We really want people to have higher expectations of facilities,” said Beverley Laubert, the state’s long-termcare ombudsman. “And we want those lower scores to cause facilities to shake things up and push the bar.”
Most facilities pay attention to the surveys and use the results to make improvements, said Pete Van Runkle, president of the Ohio Health Care Association, which represents nursing-home operators. He said the association advocated for the surveys to be created because resident and family opinions matter and are often lost in the various rating systems.
The state’s nursing homes, as a whole, generally did well in the surveys for making families feel welcome and included, but they can do a better job of making residents feel meaningfully engaged by helping them be connected to the community, having more activities and encouraging staff to respond more quickly when needed, Laubert said.
The assisted-living facilities scored higher satisfaction in a wider array of areas, but they also had several areas for improvement, including having good food, enough to do on weekends and providing activities that residents like, she said.
Quinten Smith, who runs Hoover Haus, a “mom and pop” assisted-living center with 20 residents in Grove City, couldn’t be happier with its score of 99 out of 100 on the most-recent resident satisfaction survey in 2015 and having no deficiencies for its latest health inspections.
“At first, we struggled to get residents and were not sure we’d survive,” said Smith, a former investment banker who started as director of operations and now runs the facility. “We’ve had some great success since then.”
The 8-year-old facility didn’t do as well on last year’s family satisfaction survey, scoring lower than the statewide average, but Smith said the results “only help us get better.” He said they’ve added more activities and outings and changed meals in response to requests.
He said that though they won’t ever be able to compete with some of the larger facilities in terms of total number of activities, they place a premium on spending quality time with their residents and catering to their individual needs.
Smith said he’s taking one resident shopping and to get a haircut this week, for example, and another to visit his wife’s grave. “We do a lot of one-onone activities,” he said.
As a whole, the statewide scores on the latest family survey dropped considerably from the previous one because of changes to the questions and the answers that people can select. Officials hope the changes give facilities a better idea of how they’re doing and will help them get even better in the future.
Sometimes there can be a disconnect between what residents and their relatives want for them, or a facility can score low in an area that doesn’t matter as much to a resident and higher in things they care more about, said Laubert, the state’s ombudsman.
Sue Poll, 68, of Grove City, said the workers at Hoover Haus treat her mother and father like family. And she likes the small, homelike setting of the center.
“It fits our parents perfectly,” she said.