Most of my nursing experience is in long term care. I have held different types of nursing positions in long term care from a direct caregiver to a Director of Nursing. I have a soft spot in my heart for geriatric patients. Geriatric patients are classified as those older than 65 years of age. Only five percent of people over 65 live in nursing homes. That five percent is about 1.3 million people. Finding a quality long term care facility can be overwhelming if you do not know what to look for.
It is not the norm for someone to go into long term care. But if that time comes for your loved one, do you know what to look for? Would you know where to start?
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Visit the Facility
Not all nursing homes are created equal. The first thing you should do is visit the facility you are interested in. What was the environment like upon entering? Observe the staff. Are they interacting with the residents? (People who live in nursing homes are called residents, not patients). Look at the residents. Are they dressed in regular clothes or just a hospital gown. How’s their personal care? Is their hair combed? Are the men clean shaven?
Look up the facility’s recent survey
Long term care facilities (nursing homes) are governed by the Department of Health. Nursing homes have an annual inspection conducted by the Department of Health. The Department of Health can also visit a facility unannounced for a “complaint visit”.
Upon visiting a specific facility, ask to see their survey book. It should be sitting out for the public to view. A facilities survey information can also be found online.
For example, I googled “survey findings- pennsylvania dept of health”. That led me to a page with over four million results. I chose this site to visit, http://survey findings- pennsylvania dept of health
From here you can do a county, city or zip code search of the area you are interested in seeing the location of long term care facilities. You can also search by entering the name, size and ownership of a facility. I entered my home county and got a list containing the names of 15 long term care facilities.
Patient Care Surveys
Below the name of the facility is a link, View Patient Care Surveys. Click that link and you will see the name of the facility. You can choose to pick a specific date to view inspection results. There are also the options to print the report or to view the report.
After you decide on a dated inspection report, scroll down and you will see what areas the facility received citations. First will be the “F-tag”, the federal regulation, with a description of it. Below that are the specific observations the survey team had during the survey process showing how the facility violated the regulation.
Scope and Severity
To the right of the screen will be the categories of few, pattern or all highlighted in either blue, green, yellow or red. These are the scopes of the violation, or deficiency.
Few means this citation effected one or a very limited number of residents and/or one or a very limited number of staff are involved, and/or the situation has occurred only occasionally or in a very limited number of locations.
Pattern means this citation effected more than a very limited number of residents, and/or more than a very limited number of staff are involved, and/or the situation has occurred in several locations, and/or the same resident(s) have been affected by repeated occurrences of the same deficient practice. The effect of the deficient practice is not found to be pervasive throughout the facility.
All means this citation is widespread in the facility and/or represents systemic failure that affected or has the potential to affect a large portion or all of the facility’s residents. Widespread scope refers to the entire facility population, not a subset of residents or one unit of a facility. In addition, widespread scope may be identified if a systemic failure in the facility (e.g., failure to maintain food at safe temperatures) would be likely to affect a large number of residents and is, therefore, pervasive in the facility.
The highlighted colors are the severity of the deficiency. Blue: minimal citation, no harm to a resident. Green: minimal harm to a resident. Yellow: actual harm to a resident. Red: serious harm to a resident.
It is also beneficial to ask others for recommendations. Many people have experience with long term care. Do your research and be an informed consumer.