Portage County Legal News

Ohio ranks 21st for nursing home complaints

BRANDON KLEIN
Special to the Legal News
Published: June 19, 2019

A new analysis shows that Ohio's nursing homes are in the middle of the pack nationally based on the number of complaints per facility.

The Senior List ranked Ohio No. 21 based on most complaints per nursing home facility last year.

The state averaged 8.37 complaints per facility, costing its nursing homes $1.2 million in penalties from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, according to The Senior List's "Which States Have The Best And Worst Nursing Homes" report.

The report based its findings on data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' 2019 report.

"The number of Americans residing in nursing care facilities has surged over the past half-century, rising more than 200-fold since the 1960s and nearly doubling in just the past 20 years," the report stated. "As the U.S. population continues to grow older, it seems likely that more and more of us will require the care offered by nursing facilities in our later years because we need the kind of constant, skilled care such facilities offer."

Washington had highest number of complaints at 18.1 per facility. Washington D.C. came in second at 15.56 complaints per facility, followed by Maryland (14.38), Nevada (13.52), New Mexico (13.26), Delaware (13), California (12.27), Alaska (12.11), Oregon (12.09) and Michigan (11.64).

New Hampshire had the lowest number of nursing home complaints. The state had 2.59 complaints per facility.

Alabama came in second at 3.16 complaints per facility, followed by Rhode Island (3.2), Tennessee (3.51), South Dakota (3.63) Mississippi (3.72), Georgia (3.89), New Jersey (4.12), Louisiana (4.45), Maine (4.69) and New York (4.78).

Nationally 15,000 nursing homes had a total 121,000 complaints, or eight per facility, costing them $34 million in CMS penalties.

The most common complaint was the quality of care, which made up 19 percent of all complaints nationally, followed by resident rights (13 percent) and pharmacy services (12 percent).

Additionally, the report found:

• Ohio ranked 16th for sub-standard care complaints with 1.01 such complaints per facility;

• Ohio had the second lowest percentage of complaints of comprehensive, patient-centered care plans. Such complaints made up 6.1 percent and 21.3 percent in Vermont, the highest in the country;

• And that Ohio ranked 34th for its percentage of 5-star nursing homes, which made up 19.4 percent of all of the state's nursing facilities. On the other hand, Ohio ranked 10th for the percentage of 1-star rated nursing homes, which made up 22 percent of all facilities in the state.

"The choice of where a person spends what probably will be their final months and days on earth is an important one that they should be able to make in consultation with their physicians and families," the report stated. "And knowledge is power; more and better oversight may well be needed, but families should use all the tools available to ensure the nursing facilities they and their family members use are focused not on maximizing profit but ensuring quality care, freedom and dignity of residents."

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