Ratings may factor in satisfaction results

Federal regulators are meeting with nursing home operators and other key stakeholders to discuss ways that resident and family satisfaction surveys might be factored into the new Five-Star rating system.

The conferees also will examine possibly using hard-number ratings rather than percentages in bell-curve fashion, using payroll data to determine staffing levels and determining how providers with high levels of short-stay residents should be treated.

Regulators have considered three possible levels of use for satisfaction surveys, noted Thomas Hamilton of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during a special CMS “Open Door Forum” conference call July 9.

Hamilton said the three levels are not mutually exclusive and could be phased in. They could involve 1) simply noting whether a facility uses satisfaction surveys, 2) developing a system to judge the merits of such surveys and 3) developing a national survey that would be “objectively measured by a third party.”