Nursing home owners see this system as not fair and incomplete. From one to five stars, five being the highest, the home is rated on 10 “quality of care measures”.

Once again the government has way over complicated something which should be pretty simple. For instance they are mainly using state surveys over a three years period. However the state surveys are only about two weeks long in which the nursing home is aware they are being watched and rated. Out of the three years, more weight is given for the last years surveys than the previous two years.

Another couple of flaws would be that they are taking the total number of nursing homes and dividing them into percentages so that the top 10% only will recieve a five star rating. So even if all the homes are terrible the top 10% will get a high score. The other main flaw is that we are talking about nursing homes. Most of the residents are elderly and in ill health. The state and the feds will fault the homes where the residents health and mobility are not getting better, duh! It is possible for some residents to improve, however a lot of their ideas here are very unrealistic.

Some of the nursing homes insist that only a visit will tell the complete story and they are correct.

The main thing is that this whole concept is not new. The states and even the feds have been giving different monies for certain extra services provided and taken away for those standards they set which were not met.