America's Best Nursing Homes: How We Decide

the palms @palm bay

Im trying too find the rank of this nursing home

Rating nursing homes

In California the Governor signed into law that nursing homes must reveal the true owner/operator upon admission. For instance, Sun Healthcare Group Inc. had Sunbridge homes throughout the state and were found to have a broken HVAC system in a Burlingame facility that killed three patients during a heatwave in 2000. The State obtained a permanent injunction against them. They started selling off homes and continued their shoddy business practices. The State fined them in 2005 $2.5 Million for violating that injunction.

However my mother, Evelyn Calvert, was one of the five patients I knew of harmed in their Newport Beach facility in 2003. I watched Richard Laga not receive a wound care nurse over a 4th of July weekend and die from gangrene by Christmas -cited by the Dept of Health but not fined the usual $100,000 (Is this because he had no family to complain?). I witnessed Betty Harness die from fecal impaction -no excuse for this and also cited by the Dept of Health. I knew the man in Room 2-B in October, 2003, who was in his 50's died from aspiration pneumonia when suction equipment failed. Stella Carter died when doctor's orders for "stat" weren't followed because the nurse on duty was too busy and they understaffed. My own mother suffered ten months of urinary tract infections, repeated antibiotic use, contracting MRSA due to that vulnerability, had a stroke when their blood pressure monitors broke and she didn't get her medications, rendering her unable to swallow the final nine monhts of her life, requiring tube feeding. It was a horror to watch. The CEO sent his regional manager Julie Campbell to apologize to me. Yet two years later in mediation I was threatened by my attorney that the CEO would never allow my testimony to go to trial, as SUN would have been fined treble damages by any judge, or triple the award, because we could prove the CEO's willful misconduct. That attorney tricked me while I was under duress from a pancreati into signing off for only a charge of fraud for a small sum of money, not compensating for our mother's pain and suffering and death, lying about the law. Even had a letter from SUN's risk manager that it was fine to live in the facility without HVAC to patient rooms -in violation of their injunction. Sun's own medical director testified in 2008 SUN responsible for her death. But my former late attorney Daniel Leipold didn't even obtain a medical review of her records. why?

C O R R U P T I O N

The SEC found kickbacks recently by Harborside, a subsidiary of SUN's.

What's a CEO's position on a $2 Billion healthcare corporation worth?

His job was in jeopardy and my case was squashed. Sad but true.

Using refinements

When I type in refinements (e.g., Medicare/medicaid status, non-profit, etc.), how do I "send" those refinements in? The only field I see is "clear all". How do I actually tell your system to narrow the field by the criteria in which I am interested? Usually there is a "send" or "submit" button at the end of such a list of refinements.

Nursing Homes

This is a wonderful article and I agree that the tool is useful. As a hospital social worker, I am a major part of the nursing home placement process and often get asked by patients and family for a more concise tool than nursing home compare. Thanks you for highlighting this issue and I hope that this tool will not only be a one time deal, and that the information remains and is updated for use.