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California Nursing Home Oversight Is Lax, State Auditor’s Report Suggests

SACRAMENTO, CA — June 8, 2007 — The agency charged with monitoring California nursing homes does not correctly prioritize complaints and too often understates their severity, according to a recent state audit. The Department of Health Services (DHS) did a poor job of completing nursing home investigations and getting back to families who filed the complaints, the report said. Also, the system used to track complaints is subject to error, the disbursement of funds is suspect and the timing of nursing home inspections is predictable, allowing some facilities to hide violations.

Between July 1, 2004 and April 14, 2006, the DHS received about 17,000 complaints that nursing homes self–reported. The agency eventually opened investigations for 15,275 of these complaints. However, it failed to begin the investigations in a prompt manner in almost half of these cases, and completed the investigations within the legally required time for only 39% of the complaints.

In the auditor’s study of 35 complaints, 22 complainants did not receive the investigation results within the 10–day legal limit. In one case, it took 273 days. The main cause of the delays, the report concluded, was the DHS policy of waiting for a nursing home to submit a plan of correction before informing families of the investigation results.

Ways to Improve Nursing Home Monitoring

The state audit report said that staffing shortages were part of the problem. It suggested that the DHS periodically evaluate complaint procedures in district offices and perhaps temporarily lend staff to those offices with major problems. The DHS was also urged to rethink its policy of not providing investigation results to a complainant until the nursing home submitted its correction plan.

Other recommendations included:

Better training for DHS staff to ensure that data entry was uniform and accurate.
Conducting inspections throughout the survey cycle to reduce predictability.
Better control of disbursements.
Adjusting staff salaries to make them more competitive.

The audit report also pointed out that the DHS has not developed a web site that provides the public with important information about nursing homes. Proposed legislation, SB 535, would require the agency to create such a web site by March 1, 2008. In addition to other data, the web site would list nursing home violations, complaints and enforcement actions.

Your Nursing Home Case

At Brayton Purcell, we are concerned with the level of care in nursing homes. We can help you with problems such as nursing home violations, nursing home abuse and inadequate pain management issues. If you have questions about a nursing home and your legal rights, or the rights of an elderly loved one, please feel free to contact us for more information.

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