Nursing Home Quality Report for Professionals
Nursing Care Facility
Appendix
HealthGrades
Nursing Home Report CardsTM Methodology White Paper
Introduction
To help consumers evaluate and compare nursing home compliance with standards of patient care, HealthGrades
analyzed nursing home licensing survey and complaint survey data. These data were provided by the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), formerly Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) of the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. Licensing survey data came from CMS' Online Survey Certification
and Reporting (OSCAR) database. Complaint data came from CMS' Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) Complaint
database.
Data Analysis
To analyze the integrity of OSCAR data used in the analysis, HealthGrades performed a number of internal
checks. Nursing homes with different names and provider identifier numbers (unique Medicare billing numbers)
but identical phone numbers, addresses, cities, states and zip codes were identified. These nursing homes' data
were merged to provide a complete analysis of the nursing homes' history despite ownership changes and/or name
changes. Nursing homes whose most recent survey date was older than 20 months from the date the data
was received by HealthGrades were not included in the analysis.
Only nursing homes that were active in the Medicare and/or Medicaid program at the time data were obtained by
HealthGrades were analyzed. Medicare and/or Medicaid nursing homes were analyzed apart from Medicare,
hospital-based nursing homes. Medicare, hospital-based nursing homes are very different from other nursing
homes. HealthGrades did not rate Medicare, hospital-based nursing homes because these facilities are designed
for short-term patient care. Nursing homes with only one licensing survey were not included in the analysis.
HealthGrades analyzed each nursing home in the following areas:
l
Most recent licensing survey deficiencies
l
Prior licensing survey deficiencies
l
Second prior licensing survey deficiencies
l
Third prior licensing survey deficiencies
l
Deficiencies found in two or more surveys not related to quality of care
l
Deficiencies found in two or more surveys related to quality of care
l
Complaint survey deficiencies
Deficiencies are standards of care that have not been met by the nursing home at the time of the survey.
11/10/2005
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