The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a new rating system for nursing homes whereby choosing a nursing home would become easier for elderly Americans and their families.

The updated system on Nursing Home Compare site uses a five star rating system, similar to that used for hotels and motels, to rank institutions nationwide. The ratings would include data from health inspections, staff-to-patient ratios and quality of care on each of the 15,800 nursing homes nationwide that accept residents on Medicare and Medicaid.

CMS Acting Administrator Kerry Weems said, "I expect that consumers, loved ones who are making the decision about a nursing home, will use this to guide their decision-making. I also expect that nursing homes who find themselves at the lower end of this measurement tool ... will use this as a means of improving their quality."

Charles Phillips, a professor of health policy and management at Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health, in College Station said, "The old site had a lot of information, but the information wasn't necessarily terribly usable by the average consumer. You knew if the facility was above or below the state average, but you didn't know what that meant. What you have with the five-star system is a very well-thought-out way of summarizing all of that information that was available on the earlier site with new information. . This allows you to do a much more direct comparison in a user-friendly way."

The star ratings are given on the basis of the most recent three years of health inspections conducted by the state and federal investigators. These look at whether the facilities are following laws regarding fire safety, food storage and the handling of medications, as well as interviews with staff, residents and family members for a feedback. Issues like the number of nursing hours per patient, while factoring in the general health of a facility's residents play a very important role as well as data on health outcomes such as changes in residents' weights, the percentage of residents who develop bedsores and whether flu shots were provided.

"You get stars for the overall status of the facility, but you also get information on how many stars they got on staffing and how many on the quality measures," Phillips explained.

Larry Minnix, president and CEO of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging said, "The five-star rating system is a great idea prematurely implemented. We support a consumer-friendly nursing home rating system based on reliable quality information that the public can understand. But what is being launched tomorrow is poorly planned, prematurely implemented and ham-handedly rolled out."

Dr. Laurie Jacobs, director of the Resnick Gerontology Center, also at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said that "the positive about this is they are finally bringing to the public a rating of medical care that had been a mystery before, based on surveys, but it's limited to that and has none of the other information that families also desperately want when they want to decide on a facility."

"Things like Nursing Home Compare are tools, not the be-all and end-all," Phillips said. "Any individual who faces putting someone in a nursing home should talk to the nursing home ombudsman in the area. They're at the area agency on aging."

"The other thing is, there is absolutely no substitute for physically going to the facility yourself and getting a picture of what that facility is like and whether or not you think your loved one will be comfortable in it," Phillips added.