If you have made the difficult decision to place a parent or other loved one into a nursing home, you are probably daunted by the process of actually doing that. With so many nursing home options in Bergen County and throughout New Jersey, how can families find and choose the facility that is the best equipped to treat their loved one?
One important factor to look at and compare is the staffing levels and policies of New Jersey nursing homes. An insufficient number of staff members on duty at any given time can easily result in nursing home neglect that takes the form of insufficient monitoring, failure to receive medication or other necessary care, infrequent grooming and other harmful negligence. However, when families are researching facilities, they often only have the assurances of nursing home officials upon which to rely, with no way of telling whether what they say is truthful.
Now, however, the New Jersey Department of Health has created and released a new tool aimed at helping patients and their families determine whether a facility will be able to provide the desired and required level of care. The Nursing Home Staffing Report contains data from the first quarter of 2012, which all licensed nursing homes in the state have been required to report since January of this year.
Specifically, the report shows staff-to-resident ratios for each shift and for several nurse categories, including Registered Nurses (RNs), Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) and Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). The data will be released quarterly, and is available to the public on the Department of Health website.
If your parent or other loved one has been injured as a result of nursing home abuse or neglect, please contact Breslin & Breslin for a free consultation.
Source: NJ Today, “NJ Health Department Releases Nursing Home Staffing Level Report,” July 24, 2012
