Question:
You are to assume that your maternal grandfather, who lives in Mobile, Alabama, needs to go to a nursing home. Your mother has asked you to help her make the best choice of a nursing home for her father, who has Alzheimer's disease. Your grandfather will need a facility that cares for long-term residents as he most likely won't be able to return to his home. He has Medicare insurance, but is not eligible for Medicaid at this time. Also, he has no private long-term care insurance.
You'll use the resources and information found on the Medicare website:
https://www.medicare.gov/
The comparative performance data on the nursing home compare site will be used by you to recommend two nursing homes for your grandfather to go to and two nursing homes for him to avoid.
These facilities should be no more than 25 miles from the heart of Mobile.
Your answer should be written in the form of a business memo.
For each nursing home explain the factors you have considered (services, quality, staffing, inspection results, etc.) and why you are making the recommendations (in favor of the home or against the home).
The factors you consider should be based only on information available on the Medicare Nursing Home Compare website.
Provide examples of actual data that support your recommendations.
Be sure to recommend two nursing homes that you think would be good and why and two nursing homes that you think would not be good and why.
Include the actual names of these nursing homes in the business memo and the exact performance factors you used to make your recommendations (including the performance data where relevant).
The expectation is for you to have at least three objective and measurable reasons for recommending or not recommending a particular nursing home. For instance, do not recommend a nursing home with a high number of deficiencies just because it is non-profit or because it accepts Medicare patients.
There should be evidence that you reviewed the different types of nursing home performance data on this site. Do not focus solely on health inspection results or staffing and overlook quality measures. Also, do not simply report the number of stars for a particular nursing home. The stars are a general rating system; you need to dig deeper into the ratings to find the exact performance factors.
For example, a nursing home may have scored five stars for the quality measures, but what do those stars mean and in what areas did the nursing home do well or where did they do poorly?
What you must do is dig deeper into the specific performance data found on the site and include some of this data in your memo.
Use the information on the site to make objective performance-based assessments and recommendations.
Do not make assumptions or express opinions without any performance data to back them up.