Tips on Selecting a Nursing Home

Hello, I’m Eddie Farah and you’re watching the Legal View. In many cases, people are placed in nursing homes with little or no input by the patient or their family members. When looking at nursing homes in your geographical area, the better facilities are more likely to have a waiting list for an available room or bed.  These days, most nursing homes require the signing of an arbitration agreement. But if you’re given the opportunity, always waive the arbitration, so that all the patient’s legal rights and access to the court system are preserved.

Another suggestion is to find out how long the facility’s administrator has been with the facility, how long the facility’s head nurse has been there, and how long the facility has been owned by the company that operates it. Typically, we see a large turnover of staff and administrative persons at nursing homes in the cases that we’re investigating. We also see nursing homes changing ownership quite often. The more turnover and the more change in ownership, the more cautious you should be about that nursing home.

And don’t forget to go to Medicare.gov, where you can find out reports on health inspections and reports on staffing and details of quality measures. You can also find out about the types of complaints being investigated at that particular nursing home. Thank you for watching the Legal View.