The most recent results from a federal rating of nursing homes nationwide found hundreds of facilities that regularly expose residents to abuse and neglect. Even more troubling, more than 560 nursing homes, including 13 in New Jersey, have shown little to no improvement since the government began its rating system late in 2008.

The ratings are handed out by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Working with state inspectors, CMS grades nursing homes on a variety of factors, such as quality of care and the amount of staff time each resident receives. The agency then amalgamates the data and issues each facility a rating of one to five stars.

The most recent ratings show some improvement in the reduction of resident abuse and neglect. The percentage of nursing homes receiving four to five stars increased from 38 percent in 2009 to 43 percent in 2011. At the same time, the rate of one- and two-star facilities declined from 40 percent to 35 percent.

However, a large number of chronic problem nursing homes continued to be rated at the bottom in terms of quality of care. The most recent ratings included 564 facilities that have received one star in each of the seven reporting periods of the past three years. These include more than a dozen New Jersey nursing homes, including two each in Trenton and Toms River and one in Jersey City.

A complete list of the chronically low-rated nursing homes is available in the article linked below. Based on the CMS ratings, it appears that readers who have a family member living in one of these facilities should be extra vigilant looking for signs that their relative is the victim of neglect or abuse by staff.

Source: USA TODAY, "As nursing home care improves, some problems slow to mend," Paul Monies, Feb. 10, 2012