Anyone trying to evaluate the quality of nursing homes knows it can be a daunting task, especially if on a short deadline for moving someone out of a hospital or residence.
As online assistance, the Pennsylvania Health Department provides a record of all facilities’ inspection reports in the state and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services offers its Nursing Home Compare star ratings system that breaks down information in various categories of care among 16,000-plus facilities nationally. Making use of those, however, may challenge those limited in computer proficiency and industry jargon.
Now OnlyBoth Inc., a Pittsburgh data analytics company, has introduced a new online tool with its Nursing Home Benchmarking Engine. It markets itself — for a user fee of $9.99 and up after a free trial — as more easily weighing performance of multiple nursing homes in various areas that consumers and industry insiders may care about, while providing text descriptions instead of just numbers, stars or technical reports. The methodology has its roots in artificial intelligence algorithms developed years ago by Carnegie Mellon University researchers funded by a National Science Foundation grant.
Raul Valdes-Perez, one of those former CMU researchers and CEO of OnlyBoth, noted that nursing homes are required to supply a vast amount of information to the federal government, much of which shows up on the CMS Nursing Home Compare site. OnlyBoth takes that data and reframes it in a way it believes can be more readily understood and used, particularly highlighting how institutions are weak or strong compared to peers.
“Academics have written about Nursing Home Compare saying it’s difficult for ordinary people to get insights out of it. ... It requires too much expertise,” Mr. Valdes-Perez said. “We’ve looked and discerned the core underlying questions, which is: How an organization is performing, where it’s falling short, what it can improve, what has changed in the last year or two and is getting worse or better — and a final question, which is ‘What is best in the class?’ ... We’ve organized the entire user experience around how to answer these questions.”
So a site user may put in a search query about the county-owned Kane Regional Center in Glen Hazel and find out that among 61 nursing homes in Allegheny County, it has “the most long-stay residents who received an anti-psychotic medication” but “the 9th-fewest short-stay residents who had an outpatient emergency department visit.”
A different query could compare all nursing homes in the county on a topic, such as their level of staffing, and see the six that receive a five-star staffing rating from CMS: the Southwestern Veterans Center, UPMC McKeesport Long-Term Care, Lifecare Hospitals of Pittsburgh Skilled Nursing Unit, Providence Point Healthcare Residence, Little Sisters of the Poor and UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital Transitional Care Unit.
OnlyBoth previously did similar comparison benchmarking of universities and hospitals, but Mr. Valdes-Perez said those were one-time “showcases” simply to highlight what was possible online. With nursing homes, the company intends to update the information each quarter — as nursing homes are required to do for the government — as a permanent resource tool. OnlyBoth envisions providing something similar in the future for hospitals and other health care institutions that are required to provide comprehensive information to the government, including dialysis facilities, home health agencies and hospices.
As the OnlyBoth staff lacked expertise in the nursing home field, Mr. Valdes-Perez said that before the Nursing Home Benchmarking Engine went live in February, it was shown to multiple local nursing home executives for feedback.
One of those, Mary Murray, the administrator of Villa St. Joseph of Baden and an executive director with Presbyterian SeniorCare Network, said that compared to other methods, the OnlyBoth tool could be “a very useful key in performance improvement. It’s critical to benchmark your organization against others so you have an idea of how well you’re performing.”
Ms. Murray said consumers already seem to be making increasing use of Nursing Home Compare’s information, despite some limitations in using and understanding it, and the new tool might assist them further. She cautioned, however, against making nursing home decisions solely on written measurements.
“It’s not a 100 percent reflection of a nursing home,” she said. “I would suggest somebody also visit the nursing home and talk to other persons who may or may not have been satisfied with it. ... Talk to the persons there, ask questions and see what the resident and family experiences have been like there.”
Gary Rotstein: grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.
First Published: March 19, 2018, 10:00 a.m.
