New nursing home search tool has familiar faults, providers say

A new search tool to help individuals find information when choosing a long-term care facility fails for the same reason as most of its predecessors have, a top nursing home association executive said.

Elder Care IQ attempts to create efficient searches for long-term care locations by using data hosted by the Minnesota departments of Health and Human Services. When users type in a ZIP code, a community or a provider, they can learn what type of facilities are nearby, the types of complaints that have been filed against them, and the status of the complaints — substantiated or inconclusive.

However, the website includes complaints that were never substantiated, opening the door for flawed impressions of certain facilities, said Patti Cullen, long-time executive director of Care Providers Minnesota, an advocacy group for more than 900 providers, in an  Inforum.com account.

Cullen also said the information Elder Care IQ digs up does not necessarily include what facilities did to remediate complaints or how they improved.

“It gives you a picture of a time in the past that might not reflect what is going on right now,” Cullen noted. That echoes a common complaint about federal and state facility dashboards. “We are disappointed they didn’t include more of the caveats.”

Cullen said long-used advice still is valid. She suggested that families should tour facilities and talk to providers when searching for the right location. She noted that the state is developing its own tools, including a long-term care report card, over the next year.

Elder Care IQ is a project of Elder Voice Advocates, a coalition that says its mission is to protect seniors from abuse and neglect. 

“It simplifies the way to get information,” Kristine Sundberg, executive director of Elder Voice Advocates, told Inforum.com about the search tool. 

Minnesota facilities earned more scrutiny after the state admitted in 2017 that it poorly investigated complaints about long-term care facilities. The state in 2021 debuted a revamped nursing home licensing systemMore recently, space and staffing shortages led to the refusal of 11,000 referrals of patients to Minnesota long-term care facilities. Sector advocates asked state lawmakers in early 2022 to use nearly $1 billion of the state’s budget surplus to raise pay for LTC workers among other improvements. Their pleas failed to move legislators.