We’re all familiar with 5-star restaurants and 5-star hotels. Having the stars makes it easy to rank various services and quickly decide which one is better. That’s part of the reason the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) came up with a star-quality rating system in 2008 to help rate skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers.
This system allows seniors and their families to easily know where communities rank in comparison to each other and select the right one for their loved one. But what does a CMS 5-Star rating mean? This blog post will discuss the criteria used to determine ratings and show you the benefits of a community with a CMS 5-Star rating.
The rarity of 5 stars.
Only 10% of the communities in Missouri earn a 5-Star rating. Of the 114 communities available to receive star ratings in the St. Louis area, only 11 received a CMS 5-Star Rating and two of them are the skilled nursing and rehabilitation at Friendship Village Sunset Hills and Friendship Village Chesterfield.
How are communities ranked?
Nursing homes are given a quality rating of between 1 and 5 stars. Communities with 5 stars are considered to have much above average quality, and those that receive 1 star are considered to have quality much below average. There is one overall 5-Star rating for each nursing home, and a separate rating for each of the following three areas:
- Health inspections: This rating contains the three most recent health inspections and investigations due to complaints. All the information is gathered by trained, objective inspectors who go on-site to the nursing home and follow a specific process to determine the extent to which a community has met Medicare and Medicaid’s minimum quality requirements. The most recent survey findings are given more weight than survey findings from the prior year.
- Staffing: This rating is determined using staffing data and includes the number of hours of care provided on average to each resident each day by nursing staff. This rating takes into account the differences in the levels/amount of care residents need. For example, a community with residents who have more severe needs would be expected to have more nursing staff than a nursing home where the resident needs aren’t as high.
- Quality Measures (QMs): The quality measure rating has information on 15 different physical and clinical measures for nursing home residents. The QMs offer information about how well nursing homes are caring for their residents’ physical and clinical needs.
This CMS ranking system is designed to give seniors and their families a clearer picture of a community’s quality, and help them determine where a prospective community ranks overall and in the three areas mentioned above. It’s also an excellent way to identify topics you may want to ask questions about. As CMS continues to use and learn from their system, they’ll develop, improve, and adjust the program to give consumers clearer insights into how area nursing homes compare to each other.
Make a 5-Star decision.
If you’re looking for a long-term care or rehabilitation option in the St. Louis area for yourself or a loved one, Friendship Village Chesterfield and Friendship Village Sunset Hills are excellent places to start.
As a faith-based, not-for-profit senior living community, we provide a safe, secure and engaging lifestyle focused on you. We’re also the St. Louis area’s only Life Plan Communities with the financial predictability of Life Care. To learn more about our full continuum of on-site care — including assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing and rehabilitation — contact us here.