North Carolina has some of the worst rated nursing homes in the country. A report from the Kaiser Family Foundation released Thursday shows the federal government gave more than 40 percent of the state's nursing homes one or two star ratings.
Nine nursing homes in the Charlotte area received the lowest possible rating, one star:
-Charlotte Health & Rehabilitation Center
-Courtland Terrace in Gastonia
-Five Oaks Manor in Concord
-Hunter Woods Nursing and Rehab in Charlotte
-Meadowwood Nursing Center in Gastonia
-Olde Knox Commons at the Villages of Mecklenburg in Huntersville
-Royal Park Rehab & Health Center of Matthews
-Transitional Health Services of Kannapolis
-Universal Health Care & Rehab in Concord
Medicare gives the ratings based on health inspections, staffing levels and certain quality measures. Cristina Boccuti of the Kaiser Family Foundation helped analyze those ratings.
"Nursing homes that were for profits tended to have lower ratings," she says, "and nursing homes that were larger, that is, more beds, also tended to have lower ratings."
North Carolina is one of only 11 states where at least 40 percent of nursing homes received one or two stars. Those states also tend to have a higher percentage of low-income seniors.
The federal government says the star ratings aren't the only measure people should use, but they're a valuable data point.
To see how more nursing homes in the Charlotte area fared, click this.