New federal rules make it more difficult to get information
The Capital-Journal Editorial Board had a recent editorial about a change in federal rules on nursing home inspections that restricts access to information about care facilities. The changes were adopted by the Bush administration and went into effect in October.
"It's an extremely troubling development — it puts a lot of information related to nursing-home inspections off-limits," said the director of a nonprofit organization funded in part by the federal Administration on Aging. "I think it's certainly bad for consumers and the folks who represent them."
The change barred nursing home inspectors from releasing privileged information to the public without approval from the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. State employees who performed inspections for the federal government have been reclassified as federal employees as part of the revision.
The editorial was based on an Associated Press story which focused on an 81-year-old woman who was transported from a North Carolina nursing home to a hospital in 2006 with pain in her hip. The woman's family later discovered her hip had been fractured, but no one at the nursing home had told the family anything about an accident. Her daughter was able to find out what happened, but only by reviewing follow-up reports by state inspectors.
Under the new rules, those documents wouldn't be available except with approval by the head of the sprawling Medicare and Medicaid Services agency. In the North Carolina case, the family learned from state regulators that a nurse's aide had allowed her mother to fall. The aide then got colleagues to prop up the woman in a chair and agree not to report the incident to a supervisor, as required. This kind of cover up is typical of many nursing homes.
It took more than two weeks for the woman to obtain treatment for the bone fracture. Now, she can't walk.
