A nursing home has received two dozen citations in the past two years. Various issues can arise pointing to quality of care concerns for patients. Some of those care issues involve patients admitted for rehabilitation and receiving a lower level of care once their rehabilitation days are completed.
“Hopefully, you’ve improved and don’t need a skilled level of nursing care anymore and can successfully manage at an assisted living facility,” said a local ombudsman. “But a lot of times they prefer to have folks in those beds that are being there for rehab because reimbursement rates are higher and they’ll tell a family that their Medicare days are up and they’ve got to go and find a new place to stay when in fact the room they are in is what’s called a dually certified room. If that specific bed accepts Medicare and Medicaid, realistically they can’t make them change. So we spend a lot of time reminding the facilities of that.”
“The hardest part about the complaints to the state is that when it comes in to a building, they are looking at a particular slice in time,” said the same ombudsman. “They’re looking at today, so while I’m there in the building, do I witness staff doing any of these things? Probably not, which is oftentimes why they are not able to substantiate them because while state’s in the building, there’s more staff than there ever is on a regular basis and they know they are being watched so they’re on their best behavior. We hope that they are doing that every day.” For more, read the story.
