The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) compiles a “Special Focus Facility” list that identifies what it considers to be the most troubled nursing homes in each state.  These facilities tend to have more violations, more serious violations, and patterns of violations that persist for longer periods of time than other facilities.  Once homes are placed on the Special Focus Facility list, state surveyors inspect them at least twice a year (twice as often as other facilities are inspected on average) and monitor their progress remedying their citations.  Only when a facility has had sustained improvement for a period of one year can it “graduate” from the Special Focus Facility list.  Because it is relatively difficult to get off the list, some of the homes on the list are no longer the most troubled facilities in the state; while they have slowly improved, other homes may have developed even more serious problems.  Nevertheless, it is wise for advocates to encourage clients and their families to use the Special Focus Facility list as one tool in narrowing the list of facilities they might consider. 

In Michigan, Riverview Manor in Three Rivers and Sorrento Care Center in Detroit have recently been added to the Special Focus Facility list.   Royalton Manor in St. Joseph, which has been on the list for 6 months, is identified as having failed to improve while the Heartland HCC facility in Kalamazoo has shown improvement after 20 months on the list.  Finally, South Haven Nursing and Rehab in South Haven which was added to the list has “graduated” after showing sustained improvement.

As noted in a previous newsletter, clients and their families can find out substantial information about every Medicaid or Medicare certified facility in the country at Medicare.gov’s award winning Nursing Home Compare website. (Go to Medicare.gov, scroll down the page and click on “Compare Nursing Homes in Your Area”).  The website rates every facility with between one and five stars; allows comparisons among facilities; and contains a wealth of information about the facilities’ citations for the last three years, staffing, quality measures, fire safety inspections, whether it is a for profit or not for profit corporation, how many beds it has, and other information.  Not all of the information is entirely reliable, however.  First, nursing homes can change – for good or bad – quite quickly and the information may be out of date.  Second, some of the information, like the quality measures and amount of staffing, are self-reported by the facilities and not audited.  Thus, this information may be misleading or inaccurate.  Nevertheless, the website provides an excellent starting point when clients or families have to choose a nursing home or want to evaluate their current facility.