The general trend in which more and more people file complaints about nursing homes — a trend that spans more than a decade – seems to be continuing.
The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the Inspector General (OIG), issued a “data brief” on September 28, 2017 announcing that, “Overall, states received one-third more nursing home complaints in 2015 than in 2011,” while the number of nursing home residents decreased 3 percent.
Read MoreThe report shows essentially no change in the general trend reported in my book, “Mary Regina’s nursing home,” which was published on July 9, 2017. The book covers the period 2005 to 2014, when the number of complaints went up from 52,211 to 61,466, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis of data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). According to the just-released report from the OIG, the number of complaints during 2015 was 62,790. CMS reporting of such data normally lags a year or more behind the current calendar year.
My book also reported that during the 2005-2014 timeframe, when complaints went up 21 percent, the number of citations issued by government nursing home oversight agencies for serious deficiencies ironically went down 41 percent across the U.S., according to GAO.
OIG did not address the issue of citations in its September 28 report, but it said it did not know whether an increase in complaints represents a decrease in quality of care. OIG said “other factors may contribute to an increase in complaints, such as more accessible and user-friendly options to file complaints, better tracking of complaints, or possibly an increased willingness among consumers to report on their nursing home experiences.“
My book covers a number of possible reasons for the illogical relationship between increasing complaints and decreasing citations, including a CMS announcement that the “Great Recession” was largely responsible for the decrease in citations. But whatever the cause for the increase in complaints, they represent real concerns raised by real people who felt motivated to complain.
The American Health Care Association, an association of nursing home operators, has not yet responded to my request for their comment on the OIG report, but my book quotes a nursing home attorney who said the number of complaints should be viewed in the context of how many people reside in nursing homes, which is about 1.4 million.
Individual state trends for nursing home complaints varied between 2011 and 2015, the OIG said. Thirty-five states had increases in the number of complaints during this time, with increases of 50 percent or more in 11 of those states. In contrast, 16 states had decreases in the number of complaints, with decreases of 50 percent or more in five of those states.
The OIG report said that during the period it reviewed, states conducted nearly all of the required onsite investigations of serious complaints. A handful of states accounted for about half of the late investigations of the most serious nursing home complaints, with most such late investigations being weeks late, the OIG said. The report said states substantiated almost one-third of the most serious nursing home complaints each year.
The OIG data brief can be found under the category “Related Audit Reports and Other Documents” at https://wbeerman.com