How Does Medicare Advantage Affect the Quality of Your Nursing Home?

I know it won’t be any surprise to anyone but not all nursing homes are the same. They all seem to rate differently in a variety of different categories. The key is to find the categories that are most important to you or your loved ones and pursue those. Knowing the differences helps increase your peace of mind when finally making a decision on which facility best suits your needs.

For example, some have much higher rates of re-hospitalization than others. Some are known to just do an overall better job at providing good outcomes for their residents. Still others offer many more support services and activities than others. The differences are about as many as the different nursing homes.

There are a variety of reasons for these differences in the quality of care that nursing homes provide. However, it’s not always clear why this is the case but it can definitely be noticed when you do your research on the facilities. Regardless of the reasons or the differences, the key is to figure out what’s important to you. This has become such vitally important to families that the federal government keeps track of these differences and makes them available to the public.

When someone is on Medicare, there are two types that are important to understand in more depth. It is often misunderstood the differences between Medicare and Medicare Advantage. Understanding these differences and the differences in nursing homes is also a matter of public policy. Recently, some researchers looked at the quality of care that traditional Medicare enrollees receive versus Medicare Advantage enrollees as ElderLawAnswers discusses in "Are Medicare Advantage Plans Steering Enrollees to Lower-Quality Nursing Homes?"

From the research, it turns out that Medicare Advantage enrollees, on average, enter nursing homes that score worse on quality control metrics than traditional Medicare enrollees. While the he study didn’t examine the reasons for the discrepancies, it is clear that there are differences. However, it is important that this study be pursued so policy makers can make sure that all seniors receive high quality care.

If you are a Medicare Advantage enrollee (or know someone who is) you should do your own investigation into nursing homes before deciding upon one. This is a critical decision and can greatly affect your end of life (or that of a loved one). It is definitely worth spending the time to investigate your options and make a decision that best fits your needs and those of your loved one.