Nursing Home Quality: Another GAO Report
The GAO has released another report on Nursing Home Quality. Dated October, 2015, Nursing Home Quality: CMS Should Continue to Improve Data and Oversight is a 52 page report issued by the GAO that “examines (1) the extent to which reported nursing home quality has changed in recent years and the factors that may have affected any observed changes, and (2) how CMS oversight activities have changed in recent years.”
The report notes some issues with the data collected as well as some efforts regarding oversight, and in the conclusion the GAO discusses the issues with the data and also
according to CMS officials, the agency faces the challenge of conducting effective oversight of nursing home quality with its limited resources, while meeting all of its oversight requirements. CMS has made modifications to some activities it considered essential to its oversight, without knowing whether the modifications have affected the agency’s ability to assess nursing home quality. Further, some modifications made by CMS regional offices and state survey agencies to their own nursing home oversight activities could adversely affect the CMS central office’s ability to oversee nursing home quality, while other modifications could be effective strategies that could be adopted more widely among regional offices and state survey agencies….
The GAO makes 3 recommendations:
- Establish specific timeframes, including milestones to track progress, for the development and implementation of a standardized survey methodology across all states.
- Establish and implement a clear plan for ongoing auditing to ensure reliability of data self-reported by nursing homes, including payroll-based staffing
- The Administrator of CMS should establish a process for monitoring modifications of essential oversight activities made at the CMS central office, CMS regional office, and state survey agency levels to better understand the effects on nursing home quality oversight.
A one page highlights sheet is available here and an accompanying podcast here.