A personal start to this story
Late at night, my mother calls. She has that tone in her voice that means something is wrong.
“Grandpa fell down and is at the hospital," she tells me. "The doctors tell us we have to put him in a nursing home. But, Matt, how do I pick? How do I know what place will really take care of him?”
She called me because I’m a reporter and I'm used to rooting out information. I tried everything I could think of to help, but found little to go on. In the end, my family placed my grandfather at Christus St. Joesph Villa, where he lives today, simply because he would be close to relatives.
The urgency and fear in my mother’s voice stuck with me, especially because I knew that so many families go through the same thing all the time. When my bosses asked me to write about aging from a state government perspective, I knew exactly what story I wanted to start with.
The premise: What information is out there to help people differentiate between good nursing homes and bad ones?
I zeroed in on government inspections, which are regulated federally but handled locally -- and which are clearly public records under the law.
The Tribune embarked on this project in November of 2006. The stories will finally appear in the paper this weekend.
The series got delayed by all kinds of things, including the state Legislature, elections and my move from Salt Lake City to The Tribune’s Washington, D.C. bureau -- but the biggest hold up was prying the records from the Utah Department of Health.
It took almost four months to get the first batch of data after The Tribune made its original request. No one disputed the information was public, but the health department had no easy internal mechanism to hand over the reports.
Although this is incredibly valuable information for those who are looking into placing their loved ones into a nursing home, the reports are not available online, nor in a file where they can easily be e-mailed, burned on a CD or even printed out. Rather, the reports are contained in a government database that resembles microfiche. A state employee had to go page by page to make sure he handed over only public data, not personal medical information.
The process was time consuming and costly and since they were not excited about doing it, the health department stalled at first. It took a few months, but the staff eventually warmed up and became more helpful.
What is a total challenge in Utah is a piece of cake in other states. Arizona has a really simple site that allows people to not only compare the last three inspection reports, but also click on individual violations to get more info.
Utah officials say they don’t have the resources to make such an easy-to-use site. So The Tribune has come up with its own database, and while it doesn’t include every report, it does include the most serious ones.
Here's what we're hoping: If you ever get that same panicked call that I got, you'll have a place to go to help you make one of the most important decisions of your life.
“Grandpa fell down and is at the hospital," she tells me. "The doctors tell us we have to put him in a nursing home. But, Matt, how do I pick? How do I know what place will really take care of him?”
She called me because I’m a reporter and I'm used to rooting out information. I tried everything I could think of to help, but found little to go on. In the end, my family placed my grandfather at Christus St. Joesph Villa, where he lives today, simply because he would be close to relatives.
The urgency and fear in my mother’s voice stuck with me, especially because I knew that so many families go through the same thing all the time. When my bosses asked me to write about aging from a state government perspective, I knew exactly what story I wanted to start with.
The premise: What information is out there to help people differentiate between good nursing homes and bad ones?
I zeroed in on government inspections, which are regulated federally but handled locally -- and which are clearly public records under the law.
The Tribune embarked on this project in November of 2006. The stories will finally appear in the paper this weekend.
The series got delayed by all kinds of things, including the state Legislature, elections and my move from Salt Lake City to The Tribune’s Washington, D.C. bureau -- but the biggest hold up was prying the records from the Utah Department of Health.
It took almost four months to get the first batch of data after The Tribune made its original request. No one disputed the information was public, but the health department had no easy internal mechanism to hand over the reports.
Although this is incredibly valuable information for those who are looking into placing their loved ones into a nursing home, the reports are not available online, nor in a file where they can easily be e-mailed, burned on a CD or even printed out. Rather, the reports are contained in a government database that resembles microfiche. A state employee had to go page by page to make sure he handed over only public data, not personal medical information.
The process was time consuming and costly and since they were not excited about doing it, the health department stalled at first. It took a few months, but the staff eventually warmed up and became more helpful.
What is a total challenge in Utah is a piece of cake in other states. Arizona has a really simple site that allows people to not only compare the last three inspection reports, but also click on individual violations to get more info.
Utah officials say they don’t have the resources to make such an easy-to-use site. So The Tribune has come up with its own database, and while it doesn’t include every report, it does include the most serious ones.
Here's what we're hoping: If you ever get that same panicked call that I got, you'll have a place to go to help you make one of the most important decisions of your life.
Labels: GRAMA, Utah Department of Health
