Nursing Home Abuse

Washington, DC – The U.S. has five-star rankings for restaurants and hotels. So why not five-star rankings for nursing homes?

The Bush administration announced Wednesday that it will put in place such a rating system by the end of the year. It’s designed to give consumers another tool to consider when shopping for a nursing home. The ratings would be placed on a government Web site.

In announcing their intentions, federal officials also unveiled new regulations that will require all nursing homes to have in place sprinkler systems by 2013. Homes that fail to have the sprinkler systems could not serve Medicare participants.

Overall, the government estimates that about one out of every 11 nursing homes don’t have sprinkler systems…. In 2004, the Government Accountability Office recommended that federal health officials explore requiring sprinklers in all nursing homes. The recommendation came one year after 31 residents died in nursing home fires in Hartford, Conn., and Nashville, Tenn.