Last week, Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry (D) unveiled a new state Web site that rates the quality of care of the state's nursing facilities and ranks the facilities from one to five stars, the Oklahoman reports.
The site provides ratings on 10 measures, including:
- Quality of life;
- Resident/family satisfaction;
- Nursing turnover and retention;
- State survey compliance;
- Clinical measures;
- Medicare utilization; and
- Daily ratio of nursing staff per patient.
Consumers can search the site by a nursing facility's geographic location, name or what they consider to be the most important quality.
About 85% of the state's nursing facilities participated in the voluntary ranking system, which was based on a survey conducted by My InnerView.
Mike Fogarty -- CEO of the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, which administers the state's Medicaid program -- said nursing homes that earn one to five stars in the survey will be rewarded with higher payments in 1% increments, up to 5% per patient (Stafford,
Oklahoman, 4/4).