USA Today's Nursing Home Ratings Database

The USA Today always does a great job of taking large amounts of data and turning them into usable interactive databases. They do it for the stock market, sports and everyday life. The data bases we like to feature on this blog usually have to do with health care and today we're bringing you USA Today's Nursing Home Ratings Database.

The database is very simple to use. All you have to do is enter a city and state and it will pull up the nursing homes which were rated in that area. When you scroll over the overall score (between 0-5 stars) it shows how the nursing home was ranked in specific categories. Those categories include:

Survey

Quality

Staffing

RN Staffing 

When the USA Today ran the numbers of the over 16,000 nursing homes analyzed, they found that for profit facilities are more likely to provide inferior care when compared to their not-for-profit counter parts.

This is a great starting resource for those who may be looking into placing a loved one in a nursing home. Remember to always visit the facility and ask every question you can think of to the staff and nurses.