Web Screening of US Nursing Homes by Location and Quality

To assist American families who will one day need to find a nursing home for a loved one, NLM is developing a Web 2.0 interface to important evaluative information about nursing homes in the US. Currently in prototype form, our Nursing Home Screener locates homes on a Google Map. It allows nursing home quality, indicated by map icons, to be surveyed in any of four major categories: staffing, fire safety deficiencies, healthcare deficiencies, and quality of care inferred from residents health. Within each category, options can be tailored to user preferences. Furthermore, home attributes can be used to selectively hide home markers of less interest. The goal is to offer the public a timely, easy to use site for the rapid location and comparison of nursing homes, thus identifying those worth further review or a personal visit.