1. If your parent is preparing to leave the hospital, then ask one of the in-house social workers to provide you with a list of homes.
2. Ask your parent’s doctors, nurses, family members or friends for recommendations.
3. Check out the Nursing Home Compare section of Medicare.gov, and plug in your parent’s zip code.  The site offers a star-rated list of the available options, with information from state inspections as well as from the nursing homes themselves.  The facilities are asked to provide data on staff levels and specific information about residents, such as: how many have received flu shots; are they losing weight; are they in pain; do they have bed sores; etc.
4. Check out HealthGrades.com.  This website will give you a comprehensive report that includes healthgrades’ star rating, state inspections, complaint investigations, repeat problems, basic information about the nursing home, and interview tips.  The first report costs $9.95 and all other reports cost $7.95 apiece.  They also provide, for $19.95, a report that compares up to ten specific facilities.
5. Check out ElderCarelink.com and you’ll be asked to complete an on-line needs assessment.  Then the site will provide you the names of several nursing homes from their “approved” list – these facilities will have already been screened and accepted by eldercarelink.com.  This is a free service and we found it to be helpful.
6. Medicare's Guide to Choosing a Nursing Home (PDF) booklet details how to find and compare nursing homes, how to pay for nursing home care, your nursing home resident rights, etc.  This booklet is terrific.

Once you have collected as much information as you can, then you can narrow down your list of potential homes.  The next step is to visit the nursing homes.  Going through the steps above helps to focus your search; visiting the nursing homes fills in the rest of the story.  Basing a decision solely on the various rating systems or recommendations may not give you a complete picture of what you are getting into.  These nursing home ratings include self-reporting from the different homes and from inspections that are more routine than insightful.  The information you collect during visits to the homes will help your family make the best possible choice.

We had both good and bad experiences with nursing homes.  Our dad stayed in two.  Our favorite facility got a rating of 3 stars (out of 5) and our least favorite got ratings of both 4 and 5 stars.  Go figure. The intangibles do matter!