The nursing home at Orlando VA Medical Center fell behind the national average on its overall rating and another for quality, receiving two stars with no significant change from last year, according to new information released by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
This is the first time the department is making its nursing home ratings public. It made a similar move in late 2016 by making the ratings of its medical centers public for the first time.
Similar to nursing home ratings for the private sector, the Department of Veterans Affairs gives nursing homes an overall five-star rating, followed by ratings for on-site surveys, staffing and quality.
The Orlando VA Medical Center’s nursing home received one star for on-site survey, two stars for quality and five stars for staffing.
In response, Orlando VA officials said that the one-star ratings in health inspection and survey were based on surveys until July 2017.
“On June 12 -13, 2018 the Long-Term Care Institute returned to the Orlando VA Medical Center’s CLC for an unannounced survey. The official survey report should be available sometime next month and should reflect the hard work and dedication of the Orlando VA Medical Center’s staff to continue to improve the quality of care,” an Orlando VA Medical Center spokeswoman said in a statement.
She added that the nursing home in Lake Nona has restructured the internal processes to be in line with the new scoring methodology.
“This change coupled with staffing and process changes have had a positive impact on further improving the quality of care and ratings,” an Orlando VA spokeswoman said in a statement. “It is important to note that the quality measures are adapted from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services criteria and do not always apply to Veterans receiving hospice and spinal cord care.”
VA officials said that the department’s nursing homes compare well with private sector’s more than 15,000 nursing homes because its patients tend to be sicker. The VA nursing homes also had a lower percentage of one-star facilities compared with the private sector, officials said.
“Further, we will release this data annually and use it to drive improvements across the VA nursing home system, including aggressive efforts to improve our 11 one-star facilities by sharing best practices,” said Peter O’Rourke, acting VA Secretary, in a news release.
Thirty-four VA nursing homes received five stars and the average rating for VA’s 133 nursing homes was 3.4. Sixty facilities improved their quality scores from last year. More than 70 showed no change.
nmiller@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5158, @naseemmiller
June 18: This story was updated with comments from the Orlando VA Medical Center. This article was originally published at 6 a.m. on June 18.
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