A new state tool to survey and weigh different nursing communities around Ohio went live Wednesday, Gov. Mike DeWine and Ohio Department of Aging Director Arcel McElroy announced at a press conference.
The Nursing Home Quality Navigator is an online database that indexes federal and state data on hundreds of long-term care facilities in Ohio, McElroy said.
You can search by location or individual nursing home. Each facility’s profile includes dozens of data points, including its Medicare and Medicaid star rating, bed and staff ratio details, and whether there are any suspicions of abuse. Users can also compare locations side by side.
McElroy said what’s displayed on the dashboard isn’t new information. Now it’s all publicly in one place.
“I think it’s a shame when someone has to make a life-changing decision and they don’t have that information, or they don’t have it in a way that they can easily search it and make an informed decision. ” she says. she said. “That’s what we’re trying to do with this.”
The idea came as a recommendation from the governor’s task force investigating nursing homes and long-term care facilities in Ohio. DeWine said task force members often heard that information about senior living communities in the state was too scattered to be useful.
The tool is aimed at consumers and not necessarily regulators, DeWine said. But it could also serve that purpose, he said, and could provide incentives for nursing homes to improve the quality of care because of the attention they receive compared to other nursing homes.
“The more information people have, the more responsible people become,” DeWine said.
The department plans to release a second version within a few months, working with InnovateOhio, which built the database, she said.
