Highly anticipated changes to the federal Five-Star Quality Rating System for nursing homes are set to kick in Wednesday, which is when a freeze on survey results will expire. Providers will learn whether they have gained of lost stars, or, as is expected for about half of facilities, remained the same.
Officials also have changed the quality component of Nursing Home Compare to better identify differences in care among various nursing homes, and incentivize providers to up their game.
The set of changes also will bring the addition of new measures tied to long-stay hospitalizations and emergency room transfers, along with removing some “duplicative and less meaningful” metrics. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has said it wanted separate quality ratings for short-stay and long-stay residents, and it has revised rating thresholds to better pinpoint quality variations among SNFs for consumers.
