And here is another interesting finding – the most poorly performing homes are distributed UNEVENLY across the states, with eight states having no such homes and ten others have from 21 to 52 such homes. Where do you find the 52 worst nursing homes? According to the GAO, that’s in Indiana. Florida has 16 that make the list, a relatively low number considering there are 664 nursing homes in my Florida Senior Living Advisor database. But we don’t do as well as another popular retirement location – Arizona has just 4 homes on the list.

According to GAO’s estimate, of the 16,000 nursing homes in the US, four percent – or 580 – could be considered the most poorly performing. If you want to understand more about the GAO’s research and conclusions, you can read the summary and recommendations, or even review the entire report. But be patient – it is 57 pages long! (The map showing numbers of poorly performing homes in each state is on page 15.)

In addition to those obligations, I was busy on Friday and Saturday attending an amazing conferenced about social media and blogging. It was called “Izeafest” – a reference to the company that organized it, Orlando’s Izea, Inc. I learned so much and met so many wonderful people. I’m still going through all of my notes, mapping out next steps for this blog and for the Florida Senior Living Advisor website. But I know one my priorities needs to be to find other websites and blogs to link to me. So this is my first shout-out: if you know of a useful blog that focuses on issues such as senior care, senior living facilities, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, Alzheimer’s disease, Medicare, really ANYTHING of interest to seniors, please tell me about the site in a comment below. I also want to know about these sites so I can add them to my “Helpful Links” section of Florida Senior Living Advisor.