Dive Brief:
- The CMS has toughened the NHC 5-Star Quality Rating System for nursing homes, which provides details online to allow consumers to compare ratings for facilities within a given state.
- The changes include the addition of two quality measures for antipsychotic medication use; raised expectations; adjusted staffing algorithms; and the expansion of on-site surveys at nursing homes across the US.
- "The changes in ratings reflect that CMS raised the bar for performance that should be recognized as high quality and anticipates nursing homes will make quality improvements to achieve these higher standards," the CMS fact sheet states.
Dive Insight:
This move by the CMS is part of its larger push toward transparency, and toward nudging nursing homes toward continually higher standards.
"When progress is achieved, CMS resets the distribution to promote further progress and maintain the ability of consumers and families to identify meaningful differences in quality among nursing homes in their state," the announcement says.
As Modern Healthcare notes, the system received criticism after low quality nursing homes were able to receive 4 and 5 star ratings, which will now be more difficult to achieve.
Nursing homes have incentive to keep their ratings strong, given that the Nursing Home Compare website receives more than 1.4 million visitors per year and that 85% of visitors report finding the information they needed. The CMS plans to unveil Nursing Home Compare (NHC) 3.0 this Friday, Feb. 20.