Editor's note: This story originally ran in June.

WASHINGTON - The federal government will soon rank nursing homes on a five-star scale, similar to the way critics review restaurants and hotels.

The new rankings, which are still in the works, will appear on Medicare's "Nursing Home Compare" Web site by the end of the year, with the goal of helping families identify the best facilities in their area.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, known as CMS, announced the move Wednesday after receiving pressure from senators who believe Nursing Home Compare is hard to navigate.

"As far as I'm concerned, getting information about the quality of a particular nursing home should not have to be like going through bureaucratic water torture," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who called the new ranking system "an opportunity to promote accountability."

Nursing Home Compare includes basic staffing information, a list of quality indicators such as the percentage of residents in restraints, and general findings of inspections reports for the past three years.

However, said Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the Senate's special aging committee, "Making this information available to consumers is useless if we do not ensure they they can make sense of it."

On Sunday, The Salt Lake Tribune launched its own database of Utah nursing home inspection reports from 2000 to 2007, focusing on the times when a facility was accused of harming a resident. Those detailed reports and the compliance history for each home are available at www.sltrib.com.

The new federal ranking system would give consumers another way to distinguish the top quality nursing homes from the poor performers. And CMS acting administrator Kerry Weems hopes the five-star system will serve as a catalyst to force lower-tier homes to improve.

"I don't think we're going to see very many people who are going to be anxious to put a loved one into a one-star home," he said.

Five stars would mean the home provides "much above average" care, three stars would be "average" and one star would mean "much below average."

CMS is asking for public comment to determine how to boil down the inspection reports and quality indicators into a number of stars, or even if other data should be included.

Weems plans to set the criteria by the end of August and release the rankings in December. The government would then update the rankings quarterly.

Dirk Anjewierdan IV, who leads the Utah Health Care Association, hopes the government includes the results of customer satisfaction surveys, which almost every nursing home conducts annually.

"I think it would be great to have the families' feedback in there," he said.

Anjewierdan represents Utah's nursing home industry. He thinks combining other data with the inspection results will give people a better idea of the care their loved ones will receive.

But he also said people should not rely only on the government's five-star rating system or the inspection reports available through The Tribune.

"No matter what is out there, nothing is a substitute for going to the buildings and checking them out personally," he said.

mcanham@sltrib.com

* The federal government is proposing a ranking system for nursing homes that will be put at www.medi- care.gov/NHCompare by the end of the year.

* To comment on the proposal or suggest criteria send an e-mail to bettercare@cms.hhs.gov.

* You can check out The Tribune's database of inspection reports at sltrib.com or review other federal data at the government's Nursing Home Compare site, www.medi- care.gov/NHCompare.