Acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh has released his third report in a series on Medicaid spending in nursing homes, titled, "New Jersey Medicaid Continues to Fund Poor Quality Care for Nursing Home Residents."
The report provides a current list of 12 New Jersey nursing homes that have "consistently received the lowest-possible quality rating but continue to be paid tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid Funds."
This report is the second follow-up to an Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) report released in February of 2022, which called attention to 15 nursing homes in the state's Medicaid program that performed poorly across multiple years without facing any consequences.
This most recent report, released March 31, 2023, highlights that the nursing homes' poor performance has real and potentially fatal consequences for its residents, with state inspectors having found widespread and harmful conditions present. Conditions include abusive staff members, clogged toilets, broken doors and furniture, poorly maintained and dirty facilities and patient rooms, understaffed shifts, and untrained staff administering medications.
In its first report on this topic, OSC made several recommendations to the New Jersey Department of Human Services, Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services (DMAHS), which oversees Medicaid providers; and the New Jersey Department of Health (DOH), which oversees nursing homes. As stated in the March 31st, report, "The goal of these recommendations was to move New Jersey's Medicaid program away from a system that continues to pay significant amounts for consistently poor-quality nursing homes and replace it with one that rewards nursing homes that obtain higher ratings and provide higher-quality care."
OSC has stated that DMAHS has disregarded all but one of its recommendations, and that DOH "contends that it has taken multiple steps to improve quality of care in nursing homes through inspections and penalties, and has shared this data with DMAHS and the public."
This latest report finds that, "thus far, the approaches taken by DMAHS and DOH are not working-the consistently lowest-rated nursing homes are still providing poor-quality care; most of the facilities targeted for improvement through the Special Focus Facility (SFF) program have not improved; and several of the owners of these lowest-rated facilities continue to own or operate multiple nursing homes."
As reported on njspotlightnews.com, industry officials have criticized the OSC for what they call a "misleading" and "ill-informed" report.
Click here to read more on this story, and click here to access the report from OSC itself.
