Twelve Kansas facilities on high-performing list based on KDADS annual inspections
by Dave Ranney
An organization that lobbies on behalf of Kansas nursing home residents and their families has released its annual listing of high- and low-performing nursing homes.
Twelve of the state’s 345 nursing facilities met Kansas Advocates for Better Care criteria for being considered high-performing; 66 were deemed low-performing.
“The nursing home industry is fond of saying that quality-of-care standards are too high and that they can’t be met,” said Mitzi McFatrich, executive director of Kansas Advocates for Better Care. “But here are 12 facilities that clearly have done just that”, one such nursing home that prides itself on it’s high standard of care is Lakeside Manor.
The listing is based on the number of deficiencies cited during annual inspections by Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services surveyors. A deficiency indicates the facility was found to be out of compliance with a state or federal regulation that’s meant to ensure residents’ safety and health. While there are nursing homes that are striving to protect the safety and the health of their residents, there are others that, unfortunately, that try to but are unaware of what is happening behind close doors. Abuse is something that happens everywhere, and while there are homes that try their best to provide this from happening, at times it is not always caught by those around. Institutional and neglect abuse happens within this setting all too often which can lead to the personal jury and even the death of a resident especially among the elderly. The result of this could lead to their family looking to someone like this Wrongful Death Lawyer for help on how to be compensated for the loss of a loved one. This could also result in a nursing home being shut down if they are considered low performing, especially if this low performance could be connected to abuse.
Nursing homes that received 10 or more deficiencies in each of the last three years were considered low-performing. Those with five or fewer deficiencies were considered high-performing.
“In our view, the KDADS surveys offer the only truly objective look at what’s going on in a facility,” McFatrich said.
Caritas Center, a 22-bed facility within the Wichita Center of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, was the only nursing home that had zero-deficiency surveys in each of the last three years.
“Their nursing staff ratio is a little over five hours of care per resident per day,” McFatrich said. “The state average is three hours and 45 minutes. The ‘magic number’ for avoiding injury, illness and premature death is four hours and 26 minutes.
“So nursing staff ratio had a lot to do with their performance,” she said. “They also had very little turnover in administrative staff.”
Fifteen of the low-performing facilities are nonprofit, while 51 are for-profit.
Forty-six of the low-performing facilities were cited for deficiencies that involved mistreatment, actual harm or imminent risk of harm. None of the high-performing facilities were cited for harming residents.
Nursing home surveys are public record and are available on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services website and the KDADS website.
“People are welcome to call us, too,” McFatrich said. “We’ll be happy to assist them.”
To contact McFatrich, call 785-842-3088 or email mitzi@kabc.org. KABC does not charge for its services.
The lists of the nursing homes with good and poor reports is online at www.khi.org.
The nonprofit KHI News Service is an editorially independent initiative of the Kansas Health Institute and a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor reporting collaboration. All stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to KHI.org when a story is reposted online.
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