Maryland Among Worst In The Nation in Investigating Nursing Home Complaints On Time
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Maryland is behind most of the nation when it comes to inspecting high-priority nursing home complaints. That's according to our media partners at The Baltimore Sun.
It's something a federal inspector general has found.
The state failed to investigate nearly 650 allegations of harm at Maryland nursing homes within a required 10-day window. The federal inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported the state missed the federal deadline 74 percent of the time.
Maryland ranked 7th worst in the country for timely investigations of high level complaints.
The inspector general found four states including Maryland, Arizona, New York, and Tennessee accounted for almost half of all the late high-priority complaint investigations nationwide. In many cases, the inspector general found investigations took place weeks after the timeline set out in federal regulations.
Last year, the Maryland Health Department wrote it takes 45 days presumably, on average to initiate an onsite investigation. It attributed the delay to staffing shortages.
In 2015, the state had 232 licensed nursing homes. The federal inspector general identified 1,164 complaints during that year.