At least one or more nursing home deficiencies weren’t accurately reported by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), according to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
A report from OIG based its findings on a random sample size of only 100 nursing homes – there are 15,377 nursing homes nationwide. Based on these sample results, OIG estimated that 10,303 of all nursing homes had one or more deficiencies.
Of the 100 nursing homes studied in OIG’s sample, 34 were cited for health deficiencies, while more than half had fire safety deficiencies, and two had emergency preparedness deficiencies.
CMS didn’t report on Care Compare the results of all yearly fire safety and emergency preparedness inspections for 42 of the 100 sampled nursing homes.
In extrapolating from this data, OIG estimated that CMS failed to report 5,228 SNFs with health deficiencies, 7,996 with fire safety deficiencies, and 308 with inadequate emergency preparedness protocols.
CMS didn’t report on Care Compare the yearly results of fire safety and emergency preparedness inspections for roughly 6,458 nursing homes, OIG concluded from its study.
OIG compared deficiencies reported as of Dec. 10, 2020 to reports from state survey agencies in the three most recent annual health, fire safety and emergency preparedness inspections, along with the three most recent annual compliant inspections.
The American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) supports OIG’s efforts to resolve this issue, and agreed it’s important for Care Compare to display accurate information.
“Especially coming out of the pandemic, this situation also presents an opportunity to reconsider the status quo,” the association said in a statement. “The current survey and enforcement system has been shown to be inconsistent and ineffective, and one of our major reform proposals includes improving the oversight process. We will continue to advocate for this improvement.”
The federal watchdog arm made several recommendations to CMS in the report, including to correct the inaccurately reported deficiencies.
OIG also recommended that CMS should strengthen its processes for reviewing inspection results reported on Care Compare by requiring state survey agencies to verify reported deficiencies while also providing technical assistance and additional training to state surveyors.
Moreover, state surveyors should also verify that inspection results are accurately reported, OIG said.
And, OIG made three other procedural recommendations as well.
However, CMS only concurred with only one of OIG’s many recommendations, namely to provide technical assistance and additional training to state survey agencies.
“After reviewing CMS’s comments, we revised our first recommendation to clarify that CMS should correct the inaccurately reported deficiencies we identified for the sampled nursing homes,” OIG said. “We also revised the first part of our last recommendation to clarify that the verification should be performed when a State survey agency is preparing to conduct an inspection. We maintain that our recommendations, as revised, are valid.”
