Ohio Medicaid readies new nursing home reimbursement; New nursing home database launched

Ohio's nursing home program in Medicaid -- the federal-state health care program for the poor -- is changing how nursing homes are paid to try to address their quality. In the meantime, ProPublica launches a nursing home inspection database.

Kaiser Health News: Ohio Medicaid Program Raises Stakes For Nursing Homes
It's the latest effort to address longstanding concerns in nursing homes such as too few nurses, too many patients who develop painful bed sores or infections and too much staff turnover. While many facilities provide excellent care many others fall short, experts say (Graham, 8/14). 

ProPublica: What We Found Using Nursing Home Inspect
Drawing on government reports posted online last month, today we are launching Nursing Home Inspect -- a tool that allows anyone to easily search and analyze the details of recent nursing home inspections, most completed since January 2011. As of today, that includes nearly 118,000 deficiencies cited against 14,565 homes, but we will add more each month as new reports become available. Users can search across all the reports by any keyword, such as elope -- a feature the federal government's official nursing home website doesn't have. The results can then be sorted by both the severity of the violation and by state (Ornstein and Groeger, 8/14).