Let the Comparing Begin

1. At the Nursing Home Compare site, click on the “Find and Compare Nursing Homes” button in the middle of the page.

2. Choose your search method: by nursing home name, ZIP code proximity, city, state, or county. For example, I chose ZIP code, then (when prompted) a certain radius around that ZIP code (“50 miles”), and clicked “Continue.”

3. You’ll get a list with names and addresses of nursing homes, various ratings, number of certified beds, and type of ownership (profit or nonprofit).

4. Now click on three nursing homes you’d like to compare. Details about health inspections, nursing home staffing, quality measures, fire safety inspections, and more will appear. You can find out the number of RN hours per resident per day, the date of the last fire inspection, or the percentage of residents given influenza vaccinations. (If you like graphs, you can view the results in graph form.) You can also learn what specific deficiencies inspectors found.

When I saw that a couple of homes earned only one star (of the five possible) in the health inspections category, I clicked to view details and found a lengthy but easy-to-read list of where these facilities fell down on the job. I was particularly surprised that a beautiful, nine-year-old facility that I had assumed would be a great place to live scored low in a number of categories.

5. Now choose three more to compare. Keep doing this until you’re
satisfied you’ve learned all you can about the homes you’re interested
in. Then print out the Nursing Home Checklist, call a friend or other family member, and plan some visits.

Nursing homes that aren’t certified to participate in Medicare or Medicaid won’t show up in your comparison searches. Those homes may be licensed by the state, so for information on them, visit the Helpful Contacts page.

At the CMS site, you can also download the 68-page Guide to Choosing a Nursing Home. Chapters cover choosing the type of care needed as well as the appropriate nursing home, making arrangements to move in, paying for care, reporting and resolving problems once you’re in, and other information. If you’d rather not download and print this, you may call and order a free copy at (800) 633-4227.