Recently, a Nursing Home Report card was released. It was based on eight federal quality measures, as well as data from the Kaiser Family Foundation and complaint data from the Office of State Long-term Care Ombudsmen. Florida earned a “B, all of its surrounding states earned a “D”.
Why did Florida only get a “B”? Why didn’t Florida get an “A”? These are both great questions, but as we all learned in grade school, grades are earned- not given. Florida did rank number 11 in the country and number 1 in the southeast.
According to Brian Lee, director of Families for Better Care, an elder advocacy group, the key to good care is staffing. He says “states whose nursing homes employed an abundance of professional nurses and frontline caregivers translated into higher marks.”
Back to the question of why Florida earned a “B”, here are a few things to think about.
- Each resident in a Florida Nursing home only received an average of less than 40 minutes a day of professional nursing care, this lowered Florida’s grade from an “A” to a “B”
- Less than 10% of all of Florida’s nursing homes were cited for a severe deficiency, and 1 in 3 scored above average on health inspections.
- Over half of the registered complaints were verified
- Florida scored the highest in the southeast for direct care staffing hours.
These are just a few of the reasons for Florida’s “B”.