Nursing homes have not reported that their residents suffered 43% of the severe falls suffered by residents, according to the Inspector General report, which said the homes may be cooking their numbers to win business.
Men, young residents, and those with government-sponsored health care are the least likely to report their serious falls.
The Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General said large, for-profit and chain nursing homes reported the worst.
Investigators watch the waterfall injured or hospitalized Medicare– Registered resident. Medicare These events need to be reported. It found that there should be 42,236 falls in a year, but 18,369 of them were not.
The audit said “overall compliance is poor.”
Houses should report fall data for nursing comparisons, a Medicare A website that allows people to find the best experience. But bad reporting data suggests that the tool cannot capture the reality of many homes.
“The nursing homes with the lowest medical fall rates reported the falls we examined. This suggests that the low fall rates in nursing homes compared to nursing homes may be due to the failure of nursing homes to report falls, rather than the actual fall rates of actual falls,” the inspector general inspector said.
Only residents Medicare Reports and reports of lack of supplementary health insurance are unlikely to report. The same is true for short-term residents.
Investigators said they encountered a large nursing home with more than 200 beds and 13 fell and seriously injured and needed hospitalization during the study period. It reported only three of them.
The home has a 5-star rating, claiming a 1.3% drop in comparison, which is 3.4% below the national average.
Inspector General urges the Centre Medicare and Medicaid Services attempt to fund supplemental data beyond self-reports, but said it could take years. Meanwhile, the Inspector General urged CMS to provide better training for employees and use data analytics to find houses that do not report what they should do.
CMS agrees to the recommendation.
In 2023, the Inspector General reported that home health care facilities failed to report more than half of their falls, serious injuries and hospitalization Medicare patient.
