Nursing Home Care: You don’t get what you pay for

August 14th, 2009. By AbiK

Nursing home horror stories seem to be as common as mosquitoes at a swamp—and as annoying. So it’s no wonder that so many follow the old adage “you get what you pay for” when looking for elder care facilities for their loved ones. 

But just last week, Health Day News reported the findings of an interesting study on nursing homes. Seems non-profit nursing homes provide better-quality care than for-profit homes.

A Canadian team of researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, reviewed the results of 82 studies from 1965 to 2003, and concluded that the non-profits came out better in regard to four specific quality measures. The measures were more or higher quality staffing; lower rates of pressure ulcers; less use of physical restraints; and fewer deficiencies cited by regulatory agencies. 

And here’s another little tidbit from the study: researchers concluded, based on the findings, that if all the nursing care facilities in the US were not-for-profit, the adjusted level of care would equate an additional 500,000 hours of nursing care per day for nursing home residents.

For perspective, the recently published “America’s Best Nursing Homes” report from US News & World Report (7/2/09) indicates that 3.2 million Americans will spend at least some time in a nursing home in a typical year-and there are more than 15,500 nursing homes in the US.

Given those numbers, it’s roughly another 16 minutes per day per patient that the Canadian researchers estimate patients would have if all US nursing homes were non-profit. Ok, so that doesn’t seem like much—but consider what adding that amount of time could mean to someone who’s at risk of developing pressure ulcers, to someone who needs a bedpan change, or a simple check on their medications. Sixteen minutes could go a long way…

Tags: elder care, nursing homes

This was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 11:39 am and is filed under Personal Injury . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.