Olathe ? Federal health-care officials on Tuesday unveiled a $2.3 million program they hope will help Kansas families decide which nursing homes are best for their loved ones.

The program – called the Nursing Home Quality Initiative – posts information on each of the state’s 377 nursing homes on the Internet.

The information shows how conditions found in each home compare to both state and national averages.

“We’ve tried to make the information as plain and as easy to understand as we could,” said Lisa Williams, director of communications at the Kansas Foundation for Medical Care.

“The information is intended to spark quality-of-care conversations between the facilities and their consumers,” Williams said during an afternoon press conference at the Olathe Good Samaritan Center.

The Topeka-based foundation is overseeing the three-year U.S. Department of Health and Human Services-funded program in Kansas.

John Grace, president of the Kansas Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, called the program “a laudable step” toward improving conditions in the state’s nursing homes. But he warned that without additional funding nursing homes would be hard-pressed to keep pace with demands for more and better services.

“There is a relationship between funding and quality of service,” Grace said, noting that while Medicaid rates paid to Kansas nursing homes increased 3 percent this year, costs went up 7 percent.

Samuel Markello, a senior vice president at the foundation, said most Kansas nursing homes fared well when compared with other states.

“Generally, they are above the national average in most categories,” he said.

Markello said Kansas homes scored slightly higher than the national average in the numbers of short- and long-term residents who said they were in pain. But he cautioned against using the finding to criticize the state’s nursing homes because the score was based on several variables, not all of which were negative.

“It’s a starting point; it tells us what to look at,” he said.

Another example: According to the data, Kansas homes’ use of restraints – tying residents in their beds or wheelchairs – is half the national average.