Nursing homes: Business as usual

In 1987, Congress passed a landmark law meant to improve nursing home care for the elderly. But our investigation reveals that poor care is still all too common, especially at nursing homes run by for-profit chains, now the dominant force in the industry.

Consumer Reports' analysis found that not-for-profit homes generally provide better care than for-profit homes, and that independently run nursing homes appear to provide better care than those that are owned by chains. In a separate study, we found that many states are lax in penalizing bad homes.

For this report, we analyzed the three most recent state inspection reports for some 16,000 nursing homes across the U.S. We also examined staffing levels and so-called quality indicators, such as how many residents develop pressure sores when they have no risk factors for them.

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