Quality of Care

As you may know, the government has begun publicly reporting information that it claims relates to the quality of care provided at nursing homes in Rhode Island. Forest Farm Health Care Centre agrees that it is important for you to be informed about quality of care issues. We are concerned, however, that shortcomings in the methods used by the government to derive this information may leave you with incomplete and inaccurate information regarding the quality of services provided.

For example, the government methodology fails to adequately take into account the size of facilities. A small, personalized facility such as Forest Farm Health Care Center (we have fewer than 63 beds, many of which are private rooms) does not have a large enough census to produce statistically meaningful results. Accordingly, information in the government report that seems to imply a lower quality of care, may actually be a result of the statistical shortcomings of the methodology used.

A related problem is that some of the information reflects only certain assessments of Medicare patients. In a facility like Forest Farm Health Care Center where the majority of resident' care is not paid for by Medicare, the small sample size used leads to inaccurate information regarding the quality of services. For example, in a facility in which Medicare patients make up only 10% of the patient population, some of the government's information regarding the entire facility is derived from fewer than 10% of the facility's patients. This is so because some of the government information comes only from Medicare patients and only from those Medicare patients who meet certain clinical criteria. Therefore, the government's report about a facility like Forest Farm Health Care Center does not take into account important information regarding the majority of patients served by the facility.

Another problem with the report is that some of the information on which it is based relies on subjective judgments that are open to interpretation and vary from reporter to reporter.

We are proud of the quality of care that we provide at Forest Farm Health Care Center. We do not believe that information reported by the government accurately or adequately reflects the high quality, personalized service that is the hallmark of Forest Farm Health Care Centre. I encourage you to seek out complete and accurate information regarding quality of care issues. This organization supports initiatives of Quality Improvement and utilizes data from more than just one source. The most important way to make a decision regarding placement in long-term care is taking tours and asking about the facility. Please feel free to call me if you have any questions.

*Forest Farm Health Care Center comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. (HIPAA) Our HIPAA policy is available at the front office and is posted throughout the facility.