GAO Report criticizes investigation of nursing home deficiences
Here is a link to the recent GAO Report that shows a lack of investigation into nursing home neglect and abuse. The NY Times ran a great article on this report. Below are some excerpts from that article.
Nursing home inspectors routinely overlook or minimize problems that pose a serious, immediate threat to patients, Congressional investigators say in a new report. In the report, the investigators from the Government Accountability Office, say they have found widespread “understatement of deficiencies,” including malnutrition, severe bedsores, overuse of prescription medications and abuse of nursing home residents.
The accountability office found that state employees had missed at least one serious deficiency in 15 percent of the inspections checked by federal officials. In nine states, inspectors missed serious problems in more than 25 percent of the surveys analyzed from 2002 to 2007.
The nine states most likely to miss serious deficiencies were Alabama, Arizona, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming, the report said.
“Poor quality of care — worsening pressure sores or untreated weight loss — in a small but unacceptably high number of nursing homes continues to harm residents or place them in immediate jeopardy, that is, at risk of death or serious injury,” the report said. Nursing homes must meet federal standards as a condition of participating in Medicaid and Medicare.
Lewis Morris, chief counsel to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, said he had often been frustrated in trying to identify the owners of nursing homes that provided substandard care. “We have found nursing home residents who were grossly dehydrated or malnourished,” Mr. Morris said. “We’ve found patients with maggot infestations in wounds and dead flesh. We’ve found residents with broken bones that went unmended.”
