CHENANGO COUNTY – An new, online comparison service that is designed to help families choose a nursing home for their loved ones gave facilities in Chenango County a wide range of scores.
The report, made available in late December on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website, rates the quality of care found in the nation’s 16,000 Medicare and/or Medicaid-certified nursing homes. The facilities are rated based on health inspection results, quality measures and staffing levels. An overall rating is also provided.
Chase Memorial Nursing Home New Berlin received a perfect score of five possible stars. Oxford’s New York State Veterans’ Home received 4 out of 5 and Valley View Manor Nursing Home in Norwich received 2 out of 5 stars.
Chenango Memorial Hospital and the Pearl and Everett Gilmour Health Care Facility faired poorly, however. Each received only one star on the U.S. government’s website.
Chase’s success is owed, in part, to the longevity of staff employment and an extremely low turnover rate, said Administrator Roger J. Halbert. Most management-level employees have been on staff for an average of 20-plus years. Halbert himself has worked at Chase for 37 years and said the facility’s food service manager and head of house keeping are both 35-year veterans.
Halbert also attributed the nursing home’s high rating to its special programs. He said that in 1992, the home began implementing the Eden Alternative program, which brought senior citizens in contact with children, pets and gardening and plants. The program become so popular it was adopted by other area nursing homes and was eventually made into an international program.
Yet Halbert was joined by officials at both Chenango Memorial Hospital and the Pearl and Everett Glimmer Health Care Facility in suggesting that the rating system has some bugs.
“The star rating does have its flaws. Some say it’s only a snap shot of a certain time when the health department is in and not an adequate overview of the entire operation,” he said.
According to the New York State Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, CMS’s ratings are based on subjective surveys periodically conducted by the state health department, inaccurate results from quality measures themselves, and shortcomings of the system used to report staffing levels.
Dan Heim, vice president for public policy at NYSAHS in Albany, said state health departments rate similar incidents differently in one area of the country than in another. He said CMS’ quality measures don’t make risk adjustments for the types of conditions patients have, and staffing reports don’t take into account temporary workers.
