How to select a nursing home.

It is never easy to make the decision to place your loved one in a nursing home (long-term care facility).  Sometimes, though, it is the best solution for both your loved one’s well-being and for those that have been responsible for providing 24/7 care.  Once the decision is made to place your loved one in a long-term care facility, there are some things to look for in a place.  All facilities are not created equal.  There are a few things you, as the family member, can do when selecting the nursing home in which your loved one will reside long-term.

1.  Ask for suggestions of local places, both positive and negative, from people who have family members already in these buildings.  Who better to get advice from than someone who already has placed their loved one in a particular facility?  You can poll people that you already know personally and can even ask local groups you may be a part of on social media.  When patients' family members ask me for places I would recommend, it was usually easier for me to recommend the places that they should not send their loved one. 

The feedback I would usually receive when I was caring for people in the acute rehab setting generally tended to be negative.  I often found that if I did not hear a negative review, then the facility was at least pretty good.  So go ahead and ask your friends, your neighbors, and the groups you are a part of on social media to find what places they chose for their family members.

2.  Visit the prospective facilities.  If you have completed #1, you should hopefully have a list of 3-5 places that seem to have a lot of potential.  This is the place where your loved one will be living, so go check it out.  When you make your visit, show up unannounced.  Just like an unannounced visitor to your home, you get to see how the place really runs when the guests are unexpected.  Even if the building administrator is not able to give you a tour, there should be someone available who will walk you through the building. 

3. When you walk in, take a deep breath.  How does it  smell?  If you are hit with a strong unpleasant odor, I would turn around and leave.  This can be an indicator of not only the level of cleanliness of the building itself, but also the level of cleanliness that the residents of the facility experience. 

4.  When you are at the facility, ask to talk to the support staff.  Meet some of the nurses and definitely some of the aides as well.  These are the people who will be having direct contact with your loved one.  Do they seem happy?  Do they seem stressed out?  Ask them if they enjoy their job. A happy employee usually translates into better care for your loved one.

5. Find out the ratio of staff (nurses and aides) to patients. The lower ratio keeps staff members less stressed and also allows for faster response time to resident needs. Based on a study published in JAMA nursing homes with a higher number of nursing staff saw fewer cases of COVID-19 in their facility.

6.  Location, location, location.  Is the building you select close to where you live?  If this is a family member you want to be able to visit, then I would suggest picking somewhere that is fairly convenient for you to get to.  The more convenient a place is, the more likely you are to visit.  More frequent visits tend to keep the family member who has moved into the facility in a brighter mood.  

7. Look at the Five Star Rating of the potential facilities on Medicare.gov. This data is gathered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It compares individual nursing homes by overall rating, health inspection, staffing and quality measures. 

Please contact me or leave a comment if you have a question about selecting a nursing home.

© 2020 Jessica Kluetz, DO