SENATORS RELEASE GAO REPORT ON UNDERSTATEMENT OF CARE DEFICIENCIES IN NURSING HOMES
Washington, D.C. - Today Senators Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlighting the latest figures on the underreporting of serious deficiencies in the care provided in the nation's nearly 16,000 nursing homes. State surveyors are charged with examining federal quality standards of nursing facilities with a focus on delivery of care, resident outcomes, and facility conditions. The report provides an update to previous work done by the GAO on this issue, and finds that federal surveyors - who re-inspect a sampling of homes every year in order to monitor the proficiency of state surveyors - continue to identify more deficiencies in care than state surveyors. However, discrepancies between federal and state surveys decreased from nearly 15 percent in fiscal year 2007 to slightly over 12 percent in fiscal year 2008.
"This report shows once again that federal inspectors are uncovering problems that state inspectors are not, a trend that GAO has documented in previous studies," Kohl said. "While state surveyors are doing a commendable job with scarce financial resources, this report shows that Congress and the Administration must do more work to bolster the survey system, both in terms of funding and a more standardized survey process."
"The gap between state inspectors and federal inspectors is shrinking, but not fast enough. We owe it to America's seniors to make sure that nursing homes are safe. I'm going to continue working to improve the nursing home inspection process," Grassley said.
To complete the study, GAO compared federal surveys, which are conducted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), to state surveys. Their analysis found discrepancies between federal and state surveys in two main areas: state surveys deviated from federal surveys both by missing deficiencies, and by citing various deficiencies at levels of severity lower than appropriate.
Kohl and Grassley were recently successful in passing the Nursing Home Transparency and Improvement Act (S. 647), ensuring that consumers will have access to more information about individual nursing homes and their track record of care. The provision also offers the government better tools for enforcing high quality standards, and encourages homes to improve on their own. AARP has called the Nursing Home Transparency and Improvement Act, which would significantly raise the bar for standards of care in nursing homes for the first time since 1987, "one of the most significant nursing home reform initiatives" in two decades.
The GAO report can be found here:
