Nursing home safety violations put many at risk

As huge swaths of California burned last fall, federal health officials descended on 20 California nursing homes to determine whether they were prepared to protect their vulnerable residents from fires, earthquakes and other disasters.

The results of their surprise inspections, which took place from September to December of 2018, were disturbing: Inspectors found hundreds of potentially life-threatening violations of safety and emergency requiremen ts, including blocked emergency exit doors, unsafe use of powers trips and extension cords, and inadequate fuel for emergency generators, according to a report released this week by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.

The nursing home residents“were at increased risk of injury or death during a fire or other emergency,” the report concluded.

The threat is not theoretical in a state that has been ravaged by natural disasters: One of the nursing homes that was inspected burned down in a wildfire afterward, so the report only includes results for the 19 remaining fa ci lities, which it does not identify.

The federal auditors said the violations occurred because of poor oversight by management and high staff turnover at the homes.

But they also criticized the California Department of Public Health, the agency responsible for overseeing nursing homes in the state, for not ensuring the homes complied with federal safety and emergency requirements.

The Office of Inspector General is auditing nursing homes across the nation that receive payments from the public health insurance programs Medicare or Medicaid to determine whether the facilities meet the stricter federal safety and emergency guidelines that were adopted in 2016.

The auditors did not choose the 20 nursing homes randomly out of t he approximately 1,200 statewide, but rather selected those in fire- and earthquakeprone regions, as well as ones already on notice f or health and safety violations.

The inspectors found a total of 325 violations at the 19 homes. Among them:

Two of the homes had pathways leading to emergency exit doors that were blocked, including one exit door blocked by a pallet.