Medicare ranks the nursing homes

It’s taken a long time for Medicare to start ranking nursing homes (including those which are Continuing Care facilities [CCRC], where you ‘buy in’ with a large deposit upfront to shift from independent living to assisted living and if necessary, to nursing care, all within the same building). However, they have finally done so, and it’s a fairly well-designed database with good search parameters. Note that nursing facilities or CCRCs which take only private-pay residents, no Medicare or Medicaid, are not included as the federal Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) does not do inspections on those facilities.

This is one of those pieces of information you hope you never have to use, either for yourself or an elderly relative – however, it’s good to know where to find such information when it’s needed, as it’s usually an emergency when that happens.

You can actually search this information two places:

On Medicare’s website, the URL is:
http://www.medicare.gov/NHCompare/Include/DataSection/Questions/SearchCriteriaNEW.asp?version=default&browser=IE%7C8%7CWinXP&language=English&defaultstatus=0&pagelist=Home&CookiesEnabledStatus=True


US News & World Report created their own searchable database off the CMS statistics, which they update quarterly at:
http://health.usnews.com/sections/health/best-nursing-homes/index.html

They are both good sites but the US News database is a bit easier to read, although I had to figure out their Search function – you set the parameters by clicking on the left-hand box with the appropriate restrictions, close up the boxes, and then the Search button will re-appear.