hey guys I'm Randall Kerr with wrl investigates I want to walk you through how to find the right
type of facility for your loved one if they can no longer care for themselves and there's
an important distinction you guys need to make sure that you're paying attention to there are
assisted living facilities which are inspected and the state oversees them and those are those
are facilities where people can generally take care of themselves but may need assistance with
daily living the second is nursing homes where people need medical care and medical oversight
and before you start searching you need to make sure you understand what your loved one's needs
are and then make the right choice as you're looking for homes so let's get started by
jumping into the database and figuring out how you can find the right facility for you
all right so now that you've figured out what you've been looking for the first thing we're
going to do is we're going to look at nursing homes now remember these are overseen by the
federal government so you're going to have to do a nursing home compare Google search to figure out
to get to your page we'll have a link for that for you and for starters you can just your location
It'll ask you if you want your location or you can just put it in so I've got the zip code of
the station here 27606 and I'm going to hit search and it's going to give me all of the facilities
right now within a 25 mile radius of this ZIP code you can scroll through them you can see them on
the map just to find out what's local because obviously you're going to want to be convenient
the next thing you want to do is to actually look at a home and I'm just going to pick you can see
the different star ratings here one star four star two star three-star facility so what you
want to do is I'll click on Hillcrest Raleigh at Crabtree since I have some experience there
and you get the facilities overall rating then you get ratings on their health inspections Staffing
and quality measures all important but remember these ratings are a snapshot it's the day that
they showed up for the most part they're they're unannounced inspections so whatever happened
on that day there could have been a lot of call outs we don't know but it's at least a starting
point for you to start looking for what you're what you need so I've got Hillcrest or Raleigh
three star overall health inspections are good which coming in and out of Cove it's a good thing
Staffing is one star which is much below average and you know our findings are that
that really was the case across much of the state so here's your just your general overview
page you can search by vaccination rates uh fire safety inspections you can search at penalties
and so we'll just click on here they've had zero penalties in the past three years which is how
long they track them so that's that's good you can keep scrolling down look you can get ownership how
many beds they have and everything but what I want to do is I want to go here was there
there's here are their latest inspections so I want to go through and go up Health inspections
these are supposed to be done annually I'm going to click on this you can see their most recent
inspection right here was October of last year so they should be due for another one you can view
the whole report by clicking a link they didn't find any deficiencies so that's a good thing
let me get my
mind and complaint inspections they have no claim complaint inspections I'll pull up another home
real quick so you can see what you should also look out for so they have no deficiencies in this
latest inspection no complaint inspections between the state both good signs but let's go back and
we'll go back to our list and we'll go to Pruitt Health in Raleigh which is a one-star facility
one star overall which is listed as much below average one star on their last inspection so
let's view that so their last inspection was in May you can read the whole report
not a lot of finding some of these can be 60 70 100 pages so they didn't have a ton
really to look at and a lot of these things are paperwork but read through them just so you know
if it's actually direct care or sometimes it's just not having the right paperwork for your staff
total number of Health citations they have 12. and now here's what I want what I want you to look at
as you look for your homes look for complaint inspections these are people who are living
there or their family members who are filing complaints you can see how many times they've
been out to this facility based on complaints and then right below that number of complaints in
the past three years that resulted in a citation that's a pretty good indicator of how consistent
problems may or may not be as I talked about those Health inspections are a one-time thing
it's a snapshot but this as the facility goes unchecked for months on end is a good indicator of
what daily life really is like you can also view these full and read to see about what they found
this was a patient that looked like they had some some weight issues and some they were tube feeding
so it certainly it'll tell you residents affected few level level of harm minimal harm sometimes
that'll go up to Serious harm and you can find out how much a facility has really gotten in
trouble so I think these are good jumping off points if you if your loved one needs a nursing
home hop in this database poke around get to know it before you have to make a decision have a plan
before it's too late is what experts always tell us so that's for nursing homes next we'll get
started on the state assisted living facilities and as I mentioned we'll have links to all these
so here's the adult care licensure section for State Department of Health and Human Services
you can search for a facility right here by County city or facility name so if you know
of a facility near you that you may want to look for great just to make it easy I'm going to select
county so we get more results we'll go to Wake County since that's where we are search by county
much like the other list it gives you a list of every facility in Wake County and your star
ratings are over here on your left and the actual score obviously we know there's a big difference
between a high a and a low a so you can actually see a percentage score some of them are over 100
because they get bonus points or they've had carryover points so you'll just want to look
through addresses everything you need is here and this website works much like the federal
site you click on a facility that you may be interested in just for the sake of again showing
you what to look out for we'll go to some of these facilities that haven't scored real well this is
Cadence at Wake Forest it's a zero star facility in the latest inspection had a 40.75 out of 100.
click on this everything is really presented to you all in one place unlike the Medicare
site where you have to Fumble around and see everything is presented here we have
annual complaint inspections listed we have follow-ups so they will get back out to these
facilities if they find major deficiencies they'll get back to them several times until
those problems are corrected you can see how long it took so you know these complaints right here
and these inspections happened in December of 21 93 Pages worth of problems they found
a lot and again read through them but a lot of the problems are repetitive they'll have
one patient that may have had three or four incidents that happened to them and it may
all be the same incident but they'll hit the facility with different code violations for
that same incident it's kind of like speeding they get you a speeding and Reckless for the same thing
then you can go back and see that the state was back out there or a County Inspector was back out
there uh three months later and then again five months later and even five months later they were
still finding new problems or old problems that weren't fixed uh right here on this left-hand
column you have the what the inspector found the right hand column is the facilities response to
what they found and what the facility is doing eventually well the hope is eventually the
facility will get everything fixed and the state will give them a clean bill of health star ratings
can update in between main inspections depending on what they find during some of these follow-ups
but again look at the single annual Health inspections as a snapshot but look for complaint
inspections that are listed in here too when they find statements of deficiencies that tells
you over here annual complaint follow-up annual follow-up annual and follow-up annual uncomplaint
you can also see a history of the facility star rating so you know not too long ago in 16 19 and
21 this was a three-star facility so something happened between you know April of 21 and January
of 22 at that facility whether it was Staffing you know we're seeing long-term covet impacts in a lot
of these places so you can see what the trend is that obviously they've run into some tough times
lately and then again all the way here at the bottom much like the Medicare site you've got
penalties you can see how much they've paid or been fined and how much they've paid and right
now these fines were all issued just this past September and right now they're still pending if
facilities pay them or if they plead them down and pay less come to an agreement with the state that
will show up there as well but you can look at the inspection number here and it'll tell you exactly
what they were fine for so again use both of these tools to figure out the best needs for your loved
one and this will give you the best snapshot at least on paper of what that facility is like again
go out and visit as many as you can that's why it's important to start early you know we were
told listen to your senses when you walk into those places or you know is the staff getting
along with one another is there are there enough staff members how are they treating the patients
are they talking to them outside of the room a lot of things that you can really see and feel
and smell in the facility does it smell clean does the administrator walk around the halls is the
administrator talking to patients all things that show that the facility really is there to care for
the people and not just a place for them to stay and unfortunately that's what you have to look out
for when you're trying to find the best place for your family member hope this helps have a good day