The federal government recently added a new tool to the database tracking nursing homes which helps users to easily identify homes with a history of resident mistreatment. The federal database – Nursing Home Compare – allows the public to search for nursing homes by state, city or zip code, and provides detailed information about every Medicare and Medicaid -certified nursing home in the country.
The new tool is a red circle icon with a white hand in the middle, which appears in the results next to the name of `nursing homes that have recently been cited for issues related to abuse or neglect. The icon is given to nursing homes where government investigators identified instances of abuse that led to harm of a resident within the past year and/or abuse or neglect that could have potentially led to harm of a resident in each of the past two years. The symbols are updated monthly and are removed when facilities go for a year without an abuse citation. The database has used the Special Focus Facility (SFF) designation – identified with a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in the middle – to denote nursing homes that have a history of poor care and as such may be subject to increased oversight and enforcement as part of the SFF program.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the red icon denoting abuse or neglect had been attached to 760 homes, or approximately 5% of the 15,262 facilities that appear in the database. In June 2019, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that nursing home violations of federal standards, which must be met in order to qualify for Medicare and Medicaid funding, had more than doubled between 2013 and 2017, when they reached 875. Underscoring the importance of conducting due diligence on nursing home facilities, it was estimated that of the nursing-home residents treated at hospital emergency rooms in 2016, up to one in five had potentially been the victim of abuse or neglect.