Via EurekAlert:
The website Nursing Home Compare, sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is a go-to resource for many families researching nursing home options for their loved ones. The number of falls that lead to injury are a critical category of concern for nursing home residents, however, a University of Chicago researcher has found that the data used by Nursing Home Compare to report patient safety related to falls may be highly inaccurate. Prachi Sanghavi, PhD, an assistant professor in public health sciences at UChicago, uncovered significant discrepancies between the falls calculations used for Nursing Home Compare’s ratings and actual Medicare claims for falls by nursing home residents from 2011-2015. She found that only 57.5% of falls were accounted for in the Nursing Home Compare’s Minimum Data Set (MDS), which is self-reported by nursing homes. Reporting rates were higher for white residents (59%) than non-white residents (46%) and for long-term stays (62.9%) than short-term stays (47.1%). The findings were published December 29, 2019 in the journal Health Services Research.