Latest Nursing Home Abuse News
New icon warns of nursing home abuse, neglect
By Andy Miller
Nov 24, 2019
ATLANTA — Five Georgia nursing homes have a small red icon attached to their listing on a website that rates quality of care.
That mark is a new tool on the federal Nursing Home Compare site to warn consumers about facilities recently flagged for abuse or neglect.
The red symbol has been attached to listings of about 5 percent of the nursing homes listed nationally, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The new icons are given to nursing homes where government investigators found evidence of abuse that led to harm of a resident within the past year and/or abuse or neglect that could have potentially led to harm of a resident in each of the past two years, the Journal reported.
Nursing Home Compare now warns consumers about abuse violations
November 21, 2019
CMS on its Nursing Home Compare website has begun indicating when nursing homes have been cited for abuse violations, and while the move has been applauded by consumer advocates, some in the nursing home industry say the alerts are misleading.
CMS adds alerts to Nursing Home Compare
CMS’ Nursing Home Compare website assigns a certain number of stars to nursing home facilities, similar to systems used to rate hotels. The best possible rating Medicare can give to a nursing home is five stars. The ratings are designed for both consumers and providers, who use them to help decide where to refer patients when they are discharged from hospitals.
Grassley has opportunity to help prevent nursing home abuse
Comprehensive background checks can help eliminate predators in the workforce
Dean Lerner
Published 1:11 p.m. CT Nov. 20, 2019
This fall, the Senate Finance Committee, led by our own Senator Grassley, is expected to unveil a bill to address abuse and neglect in nursing homes and other long-term care settings. The bill is long overdue, given countless government studies addressing these horrific problems and specifying solutions.
Lawmakers are set to announce a series of policies to provide more funding for detection and reporting of elder abuse. Will they also take meaningful steps to prevent abuse in long-term care settings?
New Government Tool Opens Window Into Nursing-Home Abuse
Roughly 5% of facilities received new red icon, seen as misleading by industry executives
By Yuka Hayashi
Nov. 19, 2019 5:30 am ET
The federal government has begun flagging nursing homes with a history of resident mistreatment, opening a new window into abuse and neglect in as many as one in 20 elder-care facilities across the U.S.
The government’s database, Nursing Home Compare, has for years allowed the public to search and compare nursing homes nationwide. But last month, the government began adding a small icon—a red circle with a white hand inside—by the name of nursing facilities recently cited for abuse or neglect.
NURSING HOMES: Better Oversight Needed to Protect Residents from Abuse
GAO-20-259T:
Published: Nov 14, 2019.
To protect vulnerable nursing home residents from abuse, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) contracts with state agencies—known as survey agencies—that can cite nursing homes for incidents of abuse.
Our June 2019 report found that, while abuse in nursing homes is often underreported, abuse citations more than doubled from 2013-2017. We also found gaps in CMS’s oversight that made it harder to protect residents and we made six recommendations to address this.
This statement for the record updates the status of these recommendations and others from prior GAO reports that examined the health and welfare of the elderly.