BriggsNetNews

Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP
Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare

CMS is responsible for ensuring that participating nursing homes meet federal standards and provides information on nursing homes’ quality on its web-based tool, Care Compare. CMS’s Five-Star Rating System, which includes an overall and three component star ratings—health inspection, staffing, and quality measures—is a prominent source of information on Care Compare. CMS has worked to improve its usefulness to consumers, the quality of the underlying information, and aspects of the rating system.

GAO was asked to examine the nursing home section of Care Compare and the Five-Star Rating System. Among other issues, this report (1) examines the understandability and relevance of nursing home quality information on Care Compare, and (2) describes CMS’s assessment of underlying information.

GAO reviewed nursing home information on Care Compare against 15 characteristics of understandability and relevancy for effective transparency tools that were identified in previous GAO work. GAO also reviewed CMS’s assessment of three of the primary sources of nursing home information for Care Compare: staffing data, inspections, and quality measures.

GAO released GAO-23-105312 on June 21, 2023. The full report is 65 pages in length.

• GAO Highlights … 1 page
• Accessible Version (PDF) … 77 pages 

GAO found that the nursing home quality information the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provides on Care Compare—which was developed to assist consumers in selecting a nursing home—at least partially aligns with 11 of 15 characteristics of understandability and relevancy for an effective transparency tool. These characteristics include providing descriptions of key differences in clinical quality of care, enabling consumers to customize information, and comparing multiple nursing homes. However, GAO also found Care Compare did not align with four of the characteristics. GAO has made recommendations in the past that apply to some of these characteristics, and for others, CMS told GAO about ongoing efforts to address some of the characteristics GAO identified.

GAO is making no new recommendations in this report. GAO has made three prior recommendations that, if implemented, would improve consumers’ ability to compare nursing homes’ cost and quality on Care Compare.

Care Compare, previously known as Nursing Home Compare, has always been somewhat controversial with providers.  Whatever your view of Care Compare is, this is a good read. There’s a lot of information in this GAO report.  Please review and share it with your team and colleagues.When was the last time you looked at your facility or any other facilities through the lens of Care Compare???