Quality Healthcare in Nursing Homes: Falls, and the Trap of Benchmarks

Go to any nursing home website, and you will discover a prominent theme: quality. But what is meant by quality and how is it measured? Just saying that a nursing home provides “quality” is abstract and empty unless it can be tangibly demonstrated. One common way to demonstrate quality is to link it with measurements, including the collection of metrics and whether these metrics have achieved pre-determined benchmarks. The assumption is that when a facility’s metrics compare favorably to their benchmarks, this reflects good performance and thus quality.