By Prachi Sanghavi and Zihan Chen: Complete Post through this link…
Key Points
Question To what extent are nursing home characteristics associated with reporting rates of major injury falls and pressure ulcers on the Nursing Home Care Compare (NHCC) website?
Findings In this quality improvement study involving 13 179 nursing homes, underreporting of major injury falls and pressure ulcers to the NHCC website was widespread across nursing homes and was associated with few facility characteristics other than racial and ethnic composition. Nursing homes with more White residents had high reporting rates for major injury falls, whereas facilities with more Black residents had higher reporting rates for pressure ulcers.
Meaning The findings of this study suggest that given the widespread underreporting on the NHCC website of 2 patient safety indicators across nursing homes, alternative approaches to measuring nursing home quality need to be considered.
Importance The US government rates nursing homes and reports the underlying quality measures on the Nursing Home Care Compare (NHCC) website. These measures are derived from facility-reported data, which research indicates to be substantially underreported.