Ohio nursing home inspectors fail to meet federal deadlines amid serious understaffing

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The agency that provides Ohio's nursing home inspectors -- the officials charged with making sure the state's most vulnerable receive proper care -- is understaffed by at least a dozen employees and, for years, has failed to meet federal deadlines for evaluating facilities.

The state's 153 inspectors, also known as surveyors, play a vital role: They examine Ohio's 960 nursing homes to ensure that residents live in a safe environment; they investigate more than 2,000 complaints a year; and they review more than 600 assisted-living centers.

A key deadline for inspecting the state's nursing homes has not been met since fiscal year 2011, records show. Ohio is the fourth worst in the nation in terms of the average interval between inspections of the same facility, according to records The Plain Dealer obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which contracts with the Ohio Department of Health to inspect nursing homes, mandates the average interval period should be 12.9 months; Ohio's average was 13.8 months last year, an improvement over the 14.4 months in 2015.

Read more: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/04/ohio_nursing_home_inspectors_f.html