Abstract
The past several decades have seen significant policy efforts to improve the quality of care in nursing homes, but the patient safety movement has largely ignored this setting. In this study we compared nursing homes’ performance on several composite quality measures from Nursing Home Compare, the most prominent recent example of a national policy aimed at improving the quality of nursing home care, to their performance on measures of patient safety in nursing homes such as pressure sores, infections, falls, and medication errors. Although Nursing Home Compare captures some aspects of patient safety, we found the relationship to be weak and somewhat inconsistent, leaving consumers who care about patient safety with little guidance. We recommend that Nursing Home Compare be refined to provide a clearer picture of patient safety and quality of life, allowing consumers to weight these domains according to their preferences and priorities.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1770-1778 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Health Affairs |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors are grateful for funding for this work from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (Grant No. R01HS024967).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Project HOPE— The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.