[Long Term Care] Vancouver: Inspection ratings for Metro Vancouver nursing homes now online

[Jennifer Whiteside <jwhiteside@cupe.ca>]

Inspection ratings for Metro Vancouver nursing homes now online

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Inspection+ratings+Metro+Vancouver+nursing+homes+online/4417991/story.html#ixzz1GKpo4HrnRatings also available for drug treatment centres and group homes for the disabled
 
BY CHAD SKELTON, VANCOUVER SUN MARCH 11, 2011
 
CEO Michael Ahmon relaxes in the garden area of Fleetwood Place, an adult care center in Surrey. Fleetwood Place is one of only a handful of nursing homes in Metro Vancouver to receive a "perfect" rating on its most recent inspection priority assessment.
Photograph by: Ric Ernst, PNG
METRO VANCOUVER -- Inspection priority ratings for more than 100 nursing homes in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley are now available online at vancouversun.com.

The ratings — which used to be called "risk ratings" — indicate whether a facility has been flagged by health authority inspectors as needing more frequent inspections.

Facilities rated "low" receive just one inspection a year. Those rated "moderate" get two inspections a year. And those rated "high" receive three inspections a year or more.

Last week, The Sun launched a searchable online database at vancouversun.com/daycare/ where readers can find the inspection rating as of fall 2010 for all 3,000 licensed daycares in the region.

Today, ratings for more than 500 "residential care facilities" are also being made public at vancouversun.com/nursinghomes/.

The database includes ratings for 106 nursing homes as well as 255 group homes for the disabled and 105 mental health and addiction facilities.

Overall, the data suggests that residential care facilities are less likely to be flagged as needing increased inspections than daycares.

While 7.5 per cent of all daycares have a high rating, just three per cent of residential care facilities are rated high.

Residential facilities also don't seem to suffer the same regional discrepancy in ratings as daycares do.

As reported last week, while 11 per cent of daycares in the Fraser Health region have a high rating, just two per cent of daycares in the Vancouver Coastal Health region do — a discrepancy the health authorities have not been able to explain.

In contrast, the difference in high ratings is negligible for residential care: 3.6 per cent for Fraser and 2.6 per cent for Vancouver Coastal.

When The Sun first published residential care facility ratings online in 2008, the database only allowed users to see the overall rating each facility received: low, moderate or high.

The new ratings, which are online now, allow you to see, for each facility, its exact score out of 65 and how inspectors described the facility on each of six separate categories: incident and abuse history, management effectiveness, staff qualifications, physical plant (the condition of the facility's building and playground), policies and procedures, and how well the facility self-monitors for health and safety violations.

cskelton@vancouversun.com

NOTE: Newly opened facilities may have a high rating because inspectors have insufficient experience with the facility to give them a low or moderate rating.

This database contains information taken from the health authorities' own internal databases. It may not reflect current conditions and may contain errors if inspectors entered information incorrectly. 

Search this database to find out the inspection priority level (formerly called a "risk rating") for any licensed nursing home, group home or other residential care facility in Metro Vancouver as of Fall 2010. The information in this database is accurate as of September/October 2010. Individual facilities may have had inspections since then that resulted in a change of inspection priority rating. Questions about specific facilities should be directed to the local health authority. Some private hospitals and extended care facilities are not included in this database because they are regulated under the Hospital Act. You can search for a specific facility by name or search for all facilities of a certain type or in a certain area.Use as many or as few of the search options below as you like.

Facility type	
City	
North Vancouver and West Vancouver are listed as North Shore
Facility name keyword search (optional)	
Inspection Priority Level (formerly "Risk Rating")	

Online Database by Caspio


Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Inspection+ratings+Metro+Vancouver+nursing+homes+online/4417991/story.html#ixzz1GKpgOckU