Perceived Patient Safety Culture in Nursing Homes Associated With "Nursing Home Compare" Performance Indicators

The safety and quality of care provided to nursing home residents is a significant concern. Little is known whether fostering patient safety culture helps improve the safety and quality of nursing home care.

This study determined the associations of nursing home patient safety culture performance, as reported by administrators, directors of nursing, and unit leaders in a large national sample of free-standing nursing homes, with several "Nursing Home Compare" performance indicators. We conducted the survey in 2017 using the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Survey on Patient Safety Culture for nursing homes to collect data on 12 core domains of safety culture scores. Survey data were linked to other nursing home files for multivariable regression analyses.

Overall, 818 of the 2254 sampled nursing homes had at least 1 completed survey returned for a response rate of 36%. After adjustment for nursing home, market, and state covariates, every 10 percentage points increase in overall positive response rate for safety culture was associated with 0.56 fewer health care deficiencies (P=0.001), 0.74 fewer substantiated complaints (P=0.004), reduced fines by $2285.20 (P=0.059), and 20% increased odds of being designated as 4-star or 5-star (vs. 1 to 3 star) facilities (odds ratio roughly=1.20, P<0.05).

Efforts to improve nursing home performance in patient safety culture have the potential to improve broad safety and quality of care measures encapsulated in the Nursing Home Compare publication.