An article penned by Associated Press reporter Kevin Freking notes that Medicare contracts should have been subject to termination at 55 nursing homes between the years 2000 and 2002.
Yet the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not end the contracts, as required, in 30 of these cases, the agency's internal watchdog said. Instead, problems were overlooked in the hopes that they would be solved within a short amount of time.
However, the report shows that when investigators looked at follow-up surveys of the 30 nursing homes, they recognized that all 30 of those homes had later problems that led states to refer the facilities for federal action.
Mark McClellan, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, cited his reasons for not taking further action. Among them was the desire not to have to relocate thousands of elderly patients who were residents in the 33 homes in question. He also noted that the period reviewed, 2000-2002, preceded significant improvements his agency made in enforcement.
Many disagree with the way the agency handled the findings. "I'm sympathetic to the argument that termination would displace residents. But residents in immediate jeopardy at a nursing home need to be somewhere safer," said Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. "They're the most vulnerable to abuse and neglect. Termination has to be real and enforced, or troubled nursing homes may have no other incentive to clean up their act."
Reporter Freking also states that “in addition to ending a home's Medicare contract, the government is required to deny payment for new admissions when nursing homes take more than three months to come into ‘substantial compliance’ with federal rules.”
Apparently, of 706 cases requiring denial of payment, that step was not taken 28 percent of the time, the report said.
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