As the number of violations at Tennessee nursing homes rise, two recent reports are targeting significant weaknesses in Tennessee’s oversight of health care facilities. An audit by the comptroller of the Treasury found a number of deficiencies in the Board for Licensing Health Care Facilities.
The audit found that the board failed to maintain a list of individuals, who have abused, neglected or misappropriated the property of vulnerable individuals. According to Art Hayes, director of state audit at the comptroller’s office, “That’s a very important function to have: a listing of anyone who is considered abusive and shouldn’t be working with vulnerable people. They’re not conducting all the investigations they should, they’re not holding the hearings timely and they’re not tracking people who are removed from the registry.” The audit also found that the licensing board failed to investigate complaints in a timely manner, which can keep nursing home patients in dangerous situations and make gathering evidence difficult.
The state performance audit was issued after the May report from the federal Government Accountability Office that listed Tennessee as one of nine states that most often neglected to cite serious violations at nursing homes during inspections between 2002 and 2007. The GAO found that Tennessee inspectors failed to record serious deficiencies 26.3 percent of the time. Walter Ochinko, assistant director for health care with the GAO said, “The results suggest some of the reasons for the understatement (of deficiencies) were inability to carry out an adequate investigation and determine what deficiencies should be cited.”
As consumers we expect that the government is capable of doing their job correctly. When faced with the decision of choosing a nursing home for ourselves or a loved one we rely on nursing home inspections to give us the information we need. Apparently this is sometimes not the case. Hopefully this audit with fix the problems in Tennessee and bring awareness nationwide.
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