Looking for a nursing home? There’s help now

Judy Odierna

Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2002 | 9:29 a.m.

By the time family members of Alzheimer's disease victims reach Myra Davis, they are exhausted and mentally unprepared to choose a nursing home facility.

Davis, executive director of the Southern Nevada Alzheimer's Association, is looking to the federal government's new consumer outreach program to change that.

"Any information to get out to the community at large has got to be an asset to people who are going to need it," Davis said. "People will know immediately where to get information and it will be easy for us to say this is how you get it."

The federal Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services introduced the Nursing Home Quality Initiative on Tuesday in a series of news conferences around the country.

HealthInsight, a private quality improvement firm that contracts with Medicare and Medicaid in Nevada, rolled out the project in Las Vegas at the Silver Hills Health Care Center on North Buffalo Drive.

The program, while aiming to offer advice and improvement procedures for nursing homes, is also hoping to educate consumers on where they can get information to make the best possible choice when picking a nursing home.

Nancy Whitman, director of business development for HealthInsight, says a good start for the public is to go through discharge planners at area hospitals, physician offices and other community organizations.

In addition, information that compares the quality of services in different nursing homes will also be available online or by calling (800) MEDICARE.

"We want to bring in a more educated consumer," Whitman said.

The information can be used to compare local nursing homes and how they treat patients with various conditions. In includes such data as:

A guide on how to choose a nursing home and a checklist that can be used when visiting facilities is also available. The organization emphasizes that the information they provide should be compared to other studies as well as by visiting the facilities themselves.

"One facility may be gorgeous and beautiful but it may not be appropriate for your mother or father's type of Alzheimer's," Davis said.

Davis also hopes the program will help dispel antiquated perceptions of what nursing homes do.

"When you say nursing home you think of the '30s vintage movie with a bad smell and unattractive, unsafe practices," Davis said. "These are activity centers, they don't put someone in there and dope them up anymore."