Thomas DiNapoli
ALBANY – The New York State Department of Health needs to fix problems and delays with how it is assessing fines to nursing homes after violations are found.
That’s according to an audit released Monday by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
The audit found that while state health officials frequently inspect nursing homes and act quickly on serious complaints, some facilities had repeated violations that escalated into more serious problems with limited consequences.
The audit found that state health officials have been inspecting nursing homes on a regular, scheduled basis. However, the report also found that health officials did not use the full array of enforcement actions available, choosing to not levy fines for categories of violations that account for almost 85 percent of the problems found.
The report found that the department of health only imposes fines if it finds that a problem has already resulted in actual harm to an individual, or is currently placing people in immediate jeopardy – less than 4 percent of all violations. And even when fines are imposed, enforcement procedures resulted in delays of up to six years between when a violation is cited and a fine is imposed.
The audit looked at every county in the state, including Chautauqua County, which has a total of nine nursing homes, which is 1.3 percent of the statewide total. Between Jan 2007 and May 2015, there were a total of 682 violations reported in the county, with 26 being considered major violations. However, of the 26 – only 1 was considered to be widespread violation, while 16 were considered isolated incidents. The other 9 were categorized as a pattern.
A complete breakdown of violations for each nursing home in the state, including those issued for facilities in Chautauqua County, can be found at the New York State Department of Health’s Nursing Home Profile website.
DiNapoli is recommending the department of health:
- Eliminate the backlog in enforcement activity and maintain timely processing of future assessments of fines;
- Take steps to initiate the assessment of fines earlier to better align survey results with the assessed penalty;
- Develop a single, more comprehensive system to track and monitor all enforcement actions; and
- Consider assessing fines for citations covering lower-level infractions, especially for those facilities that demonstrate a pattern of repetitive citations.
The audit is part of a series examining issues impacting New York’s senior citizens. In December, DiNapoli released an audit that called for more oversight of providers of adult day care services.
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