Race matters in quality of nursing home care

A new report reveals a system of separate andunequal nursing-home care for black Americans, one that could exposefrail seniors to substandard care.  The study, out in the September/October issue of Health Affairs,finds that 60% of blacks in nursing homes ended up in just 10% of thefacilities — typically ones that had been cited for quality problems.  “The nursing-home industry is still quitesegregated,” says researcher David Barton Smith of Temple University inPhiladelphia. “There are homes for blacks and homes for whites.”  His study of 7,196 nursing homes in 147metropolitan areas throughout the USA is one of the first to document atroubling trend in care provided to black Americans.  It is time to air the dirty laundry” about the problem, Smith says.  Nursing homes may simply reflect the racialcomposition of the neighborhood, he says. Blacks who live in the innercity tend to go to nearby facilities, which also may have mostly blackpatients covered by Medicaid, the federal health insurance program forthe poor.  Medicaid payments don’t sufficiently cover thecost of providing services to most residents, says Alan Rosenbloom,president of the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, a grouprepresenting for-profit nursing home chains.  Homes that rely heavily on Medicaid are more likely to cut staff to the bone, and that can result in shoddy care, Smith says.

Source/more:  USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-09-11-blacks-nursing-homes_N.htm

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