By Janelle Carter
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — All that Anna Spinella wanted for her three elderly relatives was a place where they could spend their final years in comfort. Instead, she says she endured a nightmarish experience trying to find good nursing homes for them.
"I went in to see my brother-in-law on Christmas Eve. He looked like he had not been clean since the day before," said Spinella, 68, of Tampa, Fla. "His sheets were sopping wet. He was unshaven. He had not been cared for since I left the day before."
Spinella, who founded Advocates Committed to Improving Our Nursing Homes, ended up moving her relatives several times before she found a facility in nearby St. Petersburg, Fla., that she liked.
"They were staffed sufficiently. The food was good. The nursing staff seemed to know what they were doing," she said.
The government hopes to help. A new six-state pilot project is intended to give consumers information that will enable them to compare the quality of nursing homes.
The project will begin Wednesday in Washington state, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Ohio and Rhode Island. The first ads listing nursing homes and information about them are to appear Thursday in some newspapers in those states.
The ads and online help — available Thursday at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Web site — will give families information on things such as the prevalence of physical restraints at a facility and the frequency with which residents contract new infections. The government will not, however, rate the homes.
The federal agency hopes to take the proposal nationwide in the next year.
"If you don’t know anything about nursing homes, you can begin to look at this and say here are some objective data," said Dr. William Minnix, president of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. The group represents 5,600 not-for-profit nursing homes.
For nursing homes, the new project will "drive us toward improving toward excellence. It will raise the bar over time," he said.
Janet Wells, director of public policy for the National Citizens’ Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, said the government’s information will help consumers ask questions.
But, Wells said, "There’s really no substitute for visiting a facility and talking to people who have an experience with it to see what their experience is."
Spinella said the government’s information could be misleading for consumers. "I think the things they tell you to look for is not really a gauge. The gauge is what happens behind the doors," she said.
She urged people to give a nursing home the "smell test."
"If it smells, people have not been changed," she said. Consumers also should make several visits when selecting a facility and ask to see beyond the entrance hallway and breakroom, she said.
"You don’t go from nine to four during the day. You go at seven in the morning. You go at seven in the evening. You go on Saturday. You go at an odd time," Spinella said. "Is there a staff person in the lunchroom? If anybody is choking is there somebody that can do something? I would look at the laundry. See how far back they are on laundry."
"The things you have to look for are not things they will show you. You have to dig them out."
Tips for choosing homes
Tips for consumers to use when choosing a nursing home:
Additional information sources on the Internet:
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