Date of Award

5-31-2016

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

Department

Business Administration

First Advisor

Atreya Chakraborty

Second Advisor

Kiran Verma

Third Advisor

Yong-Chul Shin

Abstract

This research analyzes the Medicare Nursing Home Compare Website five-star Rating in the United States. The purpose of this thesis is to discover several issues with the scores and rating systems employed on the website. The qualitative analysis performed in this project showed that the main issue faced by the five-star rating is the fact that most of the data available online are self-reported by the facilities. Medicare officials do not usually check the veracity and truthfulness of the numbers and scores reported by the nursing homes administrators.

The quantitative analysis employs a sample of data collected from twenty-nine nursing homes located in Massachusetts. These data are analyzed via statistical models such as regression analysis and t-test. The first interrogative that is answered with this method is whether various categories of nursing homes have significantly different scores. For instance, non-profit nursing homes are compared to for profits, while nursing homes located in wealthy neighborhoods are compared to facilities located in less-affluent towns. Finally, this research compares the weight and importance that the various quality measures have on the overall score of a facility.

Comments

Free and open access to this Campus Access Thesis is made available to the UMass Boston community by ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. Those not on campus and those without a UMass Boston campus username and password may gain access to this thesis through resources like Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global or through Interlibrary Loan. If you have a UMass Boston campus username and password and would like to download this work from off-campus, click on the "Off-Campus UMass Boston Users" link above.

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Additional Files

View Nursing Home Compare FINAL.xlsx (1092 kB)

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