A new analysis of Medicare data ranks the nation’s best states for nursing home care, according to organizers, and the last one to the party appears to have won the race.
Hawaii ranks No. 1 on the list with an overage quality ranking of 3.93, Care.com wrote in its analysis, which was published last week. On the flip side, Texas — a state in which experts have frequently complained about the reimbursement climate — ranks at the bottom of the list, with an average overall quality rating of 2.68.
“When nursing home care becomes necessary, we would like to believe facilities in every state or community are the same. Unfortunately, like other healthcare services, that’s not always the case,” the authors write.
Care.com is an investor-owned company based in Massachusetts that helps families find caregivers. Its experts compiled the rankings by analyzing 2017 Nursing Home Compare data and also surveying nearly 1,000 Americans with a family member entering skilled care.
Rounding out the top five were Washington, D.C., with a ranking of 3.89, Florida (3.75), New Jersey (3.75) and Colorado (3.74). Following Texas in the bottom of the rankings were Oklahoma (2.76), Louisiana (2.8), Kentucky (2.98) and Georgia (3.01).
The small survey, meanwhile, explores several facets of families’ nursing home decision, including how often individuals visit relatives, top reasons for not spending more time at nursing homes, levels of guilt for not making those visits, and how satisfied families are with nursing care.
On average, respondents said they visited family members six times per month at nursing homes, with those stays typically lasting about 90 minutes. The top reported reasons for avoiding those encounters included work making it difficult to find time (57.2%), it’s “depressing” to see relatives in this setting (39.3%), and other obligations precluding them from making time (38.3%).
