(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
This story was originally published by Iowa Capital Dispatch and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
State: Past-due nursing home inspections have been cut in half [1]
['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- December']
Date: 2023-12-19
State officials say they have reduced by more than 50% the number of Iowa nursing homes that are past due for their annual inspection.
Last week, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that the state wasn’t meeting the federally mandated standards for nursing home oversight, with some care facilities waiting up to 41 months for an annual inspection.
Federal regulations require that no more than 15.9 months elapse between annual inspections at individual Medicaid-certified nursing homes. The regulations also require that, collectively, the state inspect all nursing homes on an average of 12.9 months, if not sooner.
State records and published industry reports indicate that between October of last year and September of this year, the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing failed to meet either of those standards.
Officials with the agency said Monday the federal standards that are now in place were suspended in the federal fiscal year that ended last September. During that time, homes were still considered “past due” for an inspection after 15.9 months, but the standard wasn’t enforced.
They say that in 2023, DIAL and other state inspection agencies around the country were tasked with reducing the number of their past-due inspections by at least 50%. DIAL officials say they met that goal to the point where only 29 of Iowa’s 407 facilities remained overdue for an inspection.
The agency added that it expects to meet the standard of inspecting every nursing home within 15.9 months of its last annual inspection by the end of the current federal fiscal year, which is in September 2024.
Industry records show the agency will have to step up its efforts to accomplish that goal. The most recent data published by the Iowa Health Care Association shows how long each home that was inspected in September 2023 waited for its annual inspection.
The data shows the Good Samaritan Home in George, and Genesis Senior Living in Des Moines, waited more than 21 months for their annual inspection, and three others waited more than 18 months.
On average, the homes inspected that month waited 15.5 months for their annual inspection – significantly longer than the federal government’s standard of a 12.9-month average between annual inspections.
The delays appear to have peaked in late 2022 and early 2023, when the gap between annual inspections was, on average, close to 18 months.
Homes wait up to 41 months for annual inspection
Several of the Iowa nursing homes that were inspected during the past year waited close to two years, if not longer, for their annual inspection. For example, the Northcrest Community facility in Ames went 41 months between annual inspections. The Good Samaritan Home in Holstein waited 34 months, and MercyOne Medical Center in Centerville waited 28 months.
In all, more than 150 care facilities waited 16 months or longer for their annual inspection. Between their delayed annual inspections, some of those same homes were the subject of numerous complaints that resulted in fines and citations from DIAL.
In early 2020, before the pandemic resulted in the temporary suspension of certain inspection standards, DIAL was reported as having failed to meet the federal standard of a 12.9-month average inspection cycle every month since October 2017.
At that time, department officials said the bureaus responsible for inspecting nursing homes were close to being fully staffed and the department was utilizing contracted inspectors to catch up on some of the work.
A U.S. Senate committee reported earlier this year that Iowa ranks 49th among the states in its ratio of inspectors to nursing homes. The report also noted that Iowa has tried to catch up on a backlog of inspections by using temporary contractors that are exceedingly expensive, costing as much as $41,000 per inspection.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2023/12/19/state-past-due-nursing-home-inspections-have-been-cut-in-half/
Published and (C) by Iowa Capital Dispatch
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND-NC 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/iowacapitaldispatch/
