LINCOLN (AP) - A national consumers group put 24 Nebraska nursing homes on its newest "Watch List" for providing their residents with questionable care.
Of those, seven have been on the list three years in a row.
The report by Consumers Union, a nonprofit organization that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, used state inspection data to identify homes it says aren't providing residents good care.
More than 1,700 homes nationwide were placed on the group's list.
Of those, 290 have been on the list for each of the last three years, including: Homestead Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Lincoln; Hillcrest Nursing Home in McCook; Indian Hills Manor in Ogallala; Beverly Healthcare in Scottsbluff; Maple Crest Care Center in Omaha; Saunders County Community Hospital LTC in Wahoo; and Jefferson Community Health Center in Fairbury.
Beverly Healthcare in Columbus has been on the list the last two years. Officials at the local facility were unavailable for comment this morning.
Of the 234 nursing homes in Nebraska, 218 are members of the Nebraska Health Care Association.
Pat Snyder, executive director of the association, cautioned that reports such as the one released by Consumers Union often use "generic" information that can be misleading.
For example, she said, a nursing home might notice that a resident has a bruise but is unable to determine how it occurred.
"They may not report that," she said. "But then you have a surveyor come in and they decide 'We don't agree.'
"Nobody ever proves that abuse has occurred, but that facility could get a deficiency for that," she said. "When you have people policing people, you have some subjectivity."
The data analyzed for the Consumers Union list was compiled by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which establishes the criteria used by state inspectors to evaluate nursing facilities.
The report rates nursing homes based on a formula that takes into account quality of care, violations and the willingness of nursing homes to make their inspection reports readily available.
The report also cautions that "some facilities historically have a 'yo-yo' pattern of compliance, meaning that inspectors find no deficiencies one year and many the next."
Snyder also stressed that a change in the administrator or the nursing staff supervisor in a home can have nearly an immediate impact - good or bad - on a home's performance.
"It's an amazing thing," she said. "It only takes about a 30-day time frame to see a facility develop problems.
A report done for Congress and issued in July said many nursing homes have serious quality problems despite recent industry improvements. It also said state inspectors are failing to catch a large number of the problems.
Twenty percent, or about 3,500, of the nation's nursing homes were cited for harming patients or placing them at risk of serious injury, the report said. The investigation covered mid-2000 through 2002.
Examples of negligent care include improperly stored medical equipment and patients with untreated bed sores.
The congressional investigation revealed serious quality problems in 22 percent of nursing homes that state surveyors had cleared. The discrepancy was larger - 34 percent - in a previous study.
On the Net:
Consumer Reports Study: http://www.consumerreports.org/health
General Accounting Office: http://www.gao.gov
National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform: http://nursinghomeaction.org
Medicare's Nursing Home Compare: http://www.medicare.gov/NHCompare/home.asp
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