OnlyBoth has launched a new benchmarking-engine capability which objectively scores how each nursing home across the country stands out from others, both positively and negatively. The resulting standout score is a count of how well a nursing home stands out compared to various peer groups, as seen in the engine’s reported insights for that nursing home. Although not designed as a comprehensive ranking, the scores express comparative performance over a broad range of criteria.

According to the OnlyBoth standout scores for nursing homes, the top 5 U.S. nursing homes out of more than 15,000 in the country are these:

• #1 University Post-Acute Rehab in Sacramento, CA
• #1 Kaiser Foundation Hospital Manteca Distinct Part Skilled Nursing Facility in Manteca, CA
• #3 Signature HealthCARE At Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital in Louisville, KY
• #4 Brian Center Health & Retirement/Cabarrus in Concord, NC
• #4 Manorcare Health Services-Green Tree in Pittsburgh, PA

The scores have several uses. First, let’s say that you’re preparing a candidate list of good-performing nursing homes for a prospective resident. To score all the nursing homes in a county, click on the Score nursing homes button and enter its name in the county search box.

Second, while you’re evaluating the detailed performance of a nursing home, click on the left-side question: Where does it stand in its county? in order to highlight its ranking within all those peers.

Third, to score all the homes within a peer group you select, say for investigative or marketing purposes, e.g., all government-owned nursing homes, click on Query across nursing homes and formulate your own query.

To see what underlies the top standout scores, check out some key reported insights on California’s University Post-Acute Rehab in Sacramento and Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Manteca.

University Post-Acute Rehab is the only one of 36 nursing homes in Sacramento County which has a 5-star rating in each of overall, health inspection, quality measures, and registered-nurse staffing. The facility also has the lowest total number of health deficiencies (zero) of the 36 nursing homes in the county.

Kaiser Foundation Hospital is only one of two nursing homes in all of San Joaquin County that doesn’t have any facility-reported incidents, substantiated complaints, fines, or payment denials. It also has the lowest total number of health deficiencies (zero) of the 26 nursing homes in the county.

It’s very illuminating also to check out what underlies the worst standout scores, nationally or just in your own county.

The scores are completely transparent, just like healthcare is becoming with the help of automated benchmarking engines. You can calculate a nursing home’s score yourself, in seconds, by going through its reported insights and subtracting the negative ones from the positive ones, as explained here at the bottom.

Our standard scores are similar in spirit to Nursing Home Compare’s overall rating, which is very complex. There is a substantial correlation (0.58) between standout scores and overall ratings. Standout scores are completely linked to a nursing home’s public, comparative performance along all the included data dimensions, and is completely automated regardless of new data attributes that may be added, e.g., on patient surveys, pricing, or consumer reviews.

By empowering new uses, such as consumers wanting to create a list of candidate nursing homes to visit or to evaluate more deeply, standout scores contribute to healthcare transparency and thus ultimately to the goal of driving performance improvement.