New State Laws Call for Nursing Homes to Display Ratings
Nursing homes in the Southern California area could be required to display their scores on several examinations including quality of care scores. These new laws apply to skilled nursing homes under Medicaid and Medicare insurance.
The report does not state when these laws will take effect in Southern California. According to the lawmakers, these new laws could make it easier to choose a nursing home and could force nursing homes with low ratings to improve their scores.
The nursing homes will be required to display their scores for health inspections, quality of care inspections, fire safety and staffing inspections. The current system uses a five-star rating for each facility. The new laws will require all facilities to post these five-star ratings in their facility. This law could make it very easy to find a good nursing home for your loved ones because it would easily allow you to see which facilities earned high scores in all categories. It will allow you and your loved ones to make informed decisions about which facility is the best possible one. One downside to this law could be if a facility is able to falsify the information in the inspections, which has occurred before in other states. However, if falsification does not become a problem, this new law could potentially help the elderly tremendously.
