Starting the search for a good nursing home is not a happy task, but when a loved one’s mental or physical capabilities have declined so much that the family can no longer provide care, a nursing home is often the right choice—especially if medical care is necessary.

Coupled with the heartache of making such a decision are reports like the one released in fall 2008 by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, making the need for good research that much more important. (See “Nursing Homes Fare Poorly in Federal Report.”)

To help you along, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has created Nursing Home Compare, an in-depth Web site that provides tools to make the task a little less daunting. The CMS site rates more than 17,000 nursing homes around the country that are covered by Medicare and Medicaid insurance programs. Each facility is assigned a rating between one and five stars, with five being the highest. They’re rated on the following:

• Health inspections: This rating contains information from the last three years of on-site inspections, including both annual visits and any complaint investigation findings.
• Quality measures: This rating is based on 10 different physical and clinical measures for nursing home residents, such as the percentage of residents with pressure ulcers, moderate to severe pain, or changes in their ability to move about.
• Staffing: This rating includes information about the average number of hours of care given by the nursing staff to each resident each day—taking into consideration the differences in the level of care required. For example, a nursing home that has residents with more severe needs would be expected to have more nursing staff than a home in which the needs aren’t as high.