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CalQualityCare.org: Your Guide to Long Term Care in California

In 2007, more than one million Californians, including adults, children with disabilities, and the elderly, used some type of long term care service. This figure is expected to skyrocket as the population ages and the number of working-age people with disabilities grows.

With that in mind, the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) has unveiled a new Web site rating thousands of the state's long term care providers on a wide range of quality of care measures — information that will help consumers and their families make important choices in the planning of their health care.

The free online service, CalQualityCare.org, rates the care provided by nursing homes, hospice programs, and home health agencies, where data is available to evaluate performance. The site also provides information on many other kinds of long term care, including assisted living, retirement communities, and day care options. CalQualityCare.org features an easy-to-use "Long Term Care Assistant" tool that helps consumers choose among long term care options by posing ten simple questions.

Sponsored by CHCF in partnership with the University of California, San Francisco, CalQualityCare.org is completely independent, with no commercial relationships that might bias ratings systems. The data are collected exclusively from federal and state agencies. The site is a component of CHCF's California Health Care Almanac.

"We believe that if California consumers have this kind of information when they're making decisions about long term care, then providers will be motivated to provide better quality care to their patients," said Maribeth Shannon, director of the CHCF Market and Policy Monitor Program. "That's our ultimate goal."

Watch this short video to learn how CalQualityCare.org can help consumers with long term care decisions.

 

Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly

CalQualityCare.org, in conjunction with the Community Care Licensing Division of the California Department of Social Services, is working to provide additional information to consumers about individual Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly. For RCFE operators who choose to participate, CalQualityCare.org will display facility information such as photos, services, amenities, and fees. We encourage facility operators to complete the RCFE questionnaire at www.myccl.ca.gov starting in July 2010. Data will be collected by the state and made available to consumers on CalQualityCare.org beginning in September 2010.