Report knocks nursing homes
Nursing home care in Texas is “shamefully poor” and falls below other states, a recent report by AARP Texas has determined.
The report, “Intolerable Care: A snapshot of the Texas nursing home crisis,” examined quality at about 1,200 facilities that serve 93,000 Texans and found “numerous, long standing and severe problems” that could be fixed with stronger state enforcement powers.
“When making the difficult decision to place a loved one in a nursing home, family members deserve to know that the facility is adequately regulated,” AARP Texas director Bob Jackson said in a statement. “In Texas today those assurances do not exist.”
Of the five states with the most senior citizens, Texas had the highest number of low-rated nursing
facilities, the report found.
This report provides follow-up from one in 2014 that highlighted shortcomings in nursing home oversight in the state. A bipartisan Texas Sunset Advisory Commission in 2015 recommended that state lawmakers strengthen nursing home regulations.
AARP continues to push for reforms and is hoping for legislative action this year, Jackson said in his statement.
Among the latest report findings are that in the state fiscal year 2015, investigators found 454 violations of the severest level that put nursing home residents in “immediate jeopardy.” Another 312 violations were found at the second-highest severity level, which involved “actual harm” to residents.
That was slightly improved from the previous year, when 470 of the most severe violations were found and 337 of the secondworst category were found.
Between September 2014 and September 2015, despite authorities citing Texas nursing homes for 17,466 violations, the state took only 40 enforcement actions, the report found.
Also, repeat offenders continue to be a problem. Of more than 1,200 nursing facilities in the state, just 328 accounted for 94 percent of all serious violations.
The analysis found that fines were collected from only 22 of those 328 facilities.
Other research has echoed AARP’s dismal findings.
A May 2015 Kaiser Family Foundation report found that 51 percent of Texas nursing homes received only one or two stars in a five-star quality rating system by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. And the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services gave the states’ nursing homes an average score of 58 out of 100.
“That’s a solid ‘F,’ Amanda Fredriksen, AARP Texas associate state director for advocacy, said in the new report. “There’s a robust amount of data that suggests there are real problems when it comes to providing quality care in Texas nursing homes.”
Medication and pharmacy issues were most common, followed by staff treatment of residents.
According to CMS data, Texas ranks 42nd in the nation for inappropriate use of antipsychotics. The same federal agency reported that roughly one in five residents were given powerful medication unnecessarily.
AARP has urged Texas lawmakers to repeal the so-called “right to correct” provision that allows nursing homes the ability to avoid financial penalty and correct any violation as long as the infraction does not result in serious harm or death of a resident, constitute a serious threat to the health or safety of a resident or substantially limit a facility’s capacity to provide care.
Critics of the provisions have said it shields facilities from financial penalty for all violations except the most serious of “immediate jeopardy.”
“When fines are not assessed for these violations, nursing home operators have little incentive to correct the violations,” the report stated, adding that there should be escalating sanctions against repeat offenders.