A Florida-based advocacy group has released a state-by-state scorecard on how the residents of nursing homes are treated.
Brian Lee of Families for Better Care says his group graded states on eight federal quality measures, from the percentage of facilities with severe problems to the number of hours that frontline caregivers average per resident each day.
Florida got a B overall. But Lee says the state earned F's for its low average of professional nursing care per resident, bearing out what he'd known anecdotally."That if you have an abundance of staff in the building working who are competent at what they’re doing, then the frequency of deficiencies declines", Lee said. "Well, that’s what the data shows.”
Lee – the state's former long-term-care ombudsman – also says Florida still has 140 nursing homes on a watch list for severe deficiencies.