Violations before 2009 aren't reflected
Thomas Goldsmith - Staff Writer
RALEIGH - North Caroliona's new system to award stars to adult care homes for their quality lets centers off the hook for any serious violations that happened before Jan 1.
When the ratings for more than 60 centers go online at noon today, top marks will show up for about 95 percent of these adult care homes. North Carolina has about 1,200 adult care homes, including both family care homes - six or few residents - and assisted living centers, which are usually much larger.
State officials said the ratings didn't take into account any incidents that happened before the law took effect, including a violation that arose out of a resident's death in Burlington.
RESEARCH ONLINE
"It's problematic, but the way the law is written, it is based on a standard set of inspections that started this year," said state Rep. Jennifer Weiss, a sponsor of the legislation that created the system. "The good news is that we have a star-rating system based on inspections, which really encourages facilities to do their very best to get positive results."
Weiss suggested that people seeking placements for loved ones can dig deeper on the Web for information on some of the homes that got three stars, the highest possible score in the start-up year of the four-star system.
'They know it now'
As an example of how the law works, Alvarado's Family Care in Alamance County got a top score even though, according to state records, a resident with Alzheimer's disease died there when staff let her walk off unsupervised and she was hit by a vehicle.
The state imposed a top-level penalty on the center in July 2007, but officials said the new system doesn't hold centers accountable for any violations imposed before the law went into effect. Any top-level violation that occurs from now on will affect a center's score for two years.
"When they let a person wander off and die, they didn't know they were going to get a bad grade for it. I'm glad they know it now," said Polly Williams, a Raleigh activist who worked for the law's passage by the General Assembly.
In another example, the Michael Lane Alternative House in Moore County got a top rating despite being cited in September for allowing unqualified staff to give residents medications.
A home that receives a similar citation this year would not have received the home's near-perfect score of 98.
"They are not being dragged back into '08 and '07 because they were awarded violations not knowing they would count as points," said Jim Jones, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Human Services.
Standards to be met
The ratings from now on will include recent violations and centers' performance on minimum standards of staffing, security, training, sanitation, medication dispensing and other factors.
"What we are hoping is that they will be sensitive to the fact that they will be graded and will try to be as well-managed as possible in order to get a good grade," Williams said.
Lou Wilson, an industry lobbyist, said she wants to make sure that centers funded chiefly with Medicaid dollars don't suffer because they can't afford some of the improvements that could help boost scores for private-pay homes.
"One of the things that we have said all along is that we need to get a year or so under our belts of this and then analyze it," Wilson said.
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