title: Complaints against nursing homes: comparing two sources of complaint information and predictors of complaints.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Two consumer-derived measures of nursing home quality that have been underutilized by researchers are consumer complaints to the state certification agency between inspections and complaints to the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program. This article describes these complaints, considers facility-level predictors of complaints, and examines how complaints to the 2 entities are related.
  
  
  METHODS
  This article uses North Carolina complaint data from the state certification agency and Ombudsman from 2002 to 2006. First, we outline the similarities and differences in the 2 complaint sources by considering descriptive statistics and examining the structure of the 2 agencies. Second, we examine the relationship between complaints and facility characteristics that have been predictive of traditional quality measures. Finally, we examine the relationships between the 2 types of complaints.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We find that complaints to the 2 agencies exhibit distinct differences in substantiation rates, although the top complaint category for both agencies is quality of care. Having a higher proportion of Medicaid residents is generally not predictive of complaint volume, whereas having a higher proportion of Medicare residents is associated with higher complaint levels.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We find a lack of association between complaints to the 2 agencies when examining specific matched categories of complaints in many cases, suggesting that the 2 entities are not duplicating efforts in these categories.
authors: Department of Economics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA. jtroyer@uncc.edu
authors: Jennifer L
authors: JL
authors: Troyer
authors: Wendy L
authors: WL
authors: Sause