When elderly individuals need the constant care a nursing home can provide, it is still a difficult decision for the family to place their loved one in a facility. Often the only assurance they have is that several federal agencies oversee the operations of nursing homes. These agencies provide guidelines that ensure the residents are receiving the best care and that the facility is in good condition. Recently in Florida, two of these agencies have gotten into a dispute about what constitutes staying within those guidelines.
It was in 2015 that the state Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) found 2,381 deficiencies within Medicare and Medicaid nursing homes across Florida. Under federal regulations, nursing homes with those deficiencies must construct a plan to correct them and submit it to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or to another proper state agency. After the plan has been submitted, the AHCA must then verify the corrections were made, either by visiting the site or collecting evidence indicating the corrections had been done.
But in May 2018, the Office of Inspector General found that not all verifications had been made. In a report titled “Florida Did Not Always Verify Correction of Deficiencies Identified During Surveys of Nursing Home Participating in Medicare and Medicaid,” the inspector general stated that only 82 of 100 deficiencies studied had been verified. In addition to those 18 deficiencies not verified, the inspector general also found another 130 deficiencies that did not have verification of corrections made.
“Proper oversight of the operation of any nursing home is crucial to the daily care and support nursing home residents receive, and that includes ensuring deficiencies are corrected” said Sean Domnick, a West Palm Beach nursing home abuse lawyer with Domnick, Cunningham & Whalen after hearing of the report. “Without this verification, families cannot feel any reassurance that their loved ones are being looked after with the same vigilance and care the family would provide.”
Mallory McManus of the AHCA however, gave many reasons for those deficiencies that were not verified for correction. She claimed that none of the deficiencies caused patients any harm, and that they all involved isolated incidents. She also stated that the federal manual outlining the guidelines on how to deal with deficiencies also allowed for the practice of simply accepting the word of the nursing homes in question, with no other verification being required.
As such, Justin Senior, AHCA Secretary, asked the inspector general to change the title of the report since it was misleading.
However, the inspector general refused to change the title of the report. Instead he stated that the section of the manual the AHCA was citing did not apply to nursing homes. He also said that the verification of deficiencies being corrected was one of the only ways in which federal regulators can ensure nursing homes are complying with federal requirements, and that the residents in those facilities are kept safe.
