http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/business/medicare-alters-its-nursing-home-rating-system.html 2014-10-06 22:31:43 Medicare Alters Its Nursing Home Rating System The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services acknowledged that its five-star rating system needed work, given that it relies heavily on self-reporting. === The federal government on Monday announced substantial changes to the government’s five-star rating program for The On Monday, officials said they would make several changes, starting in January, aimed at addressing some of these concerns. Nursing homes will have to begin reporting their staffing levels quarterly using an electronic system that can be verified with payroll data. And officials will initiate a nationwide auditing program aimed at checking whether the so-called quality measures rating — which is based on information collected about every patient — is accurate. Beginning in January, nursing homes ’ ratings will also be based partly on the percentage of its residents being given antipsychotic drugs. In August, The New York Times Dr. Patrick Conway, the deputy administrator for innovation and quality at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the rating system, acknowledged that the program needed work, even while emphasizing that nursing homes’ quality is truly improving. “We believe the improvements we are making to the five-star system will add confidence that the reported improvements are genuine, are sustained, and are benefiting residents,” he said in a statelment.. Greg Crist, a spokesman for the American Health Care Association, the lobbying group that represents for-profit nursing homes, said many of the changes reflected quality improvements that the industry had already been working on. “We’ve seen the improvements in quality across the board,” he said. “Some questioned that a few weeks ago. Yet this push for greater accuracy should help reassure patients and families those improvements are both real and making a difference in improving lives.” Although the