Making the choice of a Florida nursing home for your parent is never an easy process. There are many things that you must consider to ensure the facility will provide a safe and healthy space for your parent. To help make the process better for you, the government has put the universal hand sign for stop, a palm and fingers raised, to use to warn you of possible dangers.
News-Press explains this stop hand icon indicates a nursing home has a history of abuse and neglect incidents. You will find the icon on the Medicare website next to entries for nursing homes with a reporting history.
This simple icon can save you hours of research. Before its introduction, you would have to investigate each nursing home on your own. This required going through documentation to find any signs of issues. It meant searching through reports and legal documents, which was time-consuming.
Now, you can simply visit the Medicare website and see at a glance which nursing homes have had issues in the past year. The idea is to make the website more transparent in the information it provides. Each nursing home has its own information page where you will find this icon.
The main downside to the icon is that there is no information accompanying it. Furthermore, all it takes is one report for the icon to go up. You will not know if this was an isolated incident or if there is a huge problem with abuse and neglect at the facility. So, proceed with caution when using the stop hand in your decision-making process. This information is for education and is not legal advice.