In its December 2021 report, the Pennsylvania Department of Health noted that nursing home surveyors conducted 571 inspections of 384 separate nursing homes. Of those inspections, there were 325 complaint investigations and 102 were COVID-19-specific investigations.
There were 31 new sanctions finalized against nursing care facilities in the past month resulting in a total of $314,000 in fines. In addition to civil penalties, a provisional one license, a provisional three license and a ban on admissions were issued this month.
Individuals can call 1-800-254-5164, fill out the online complaint form, email c-ncomplai@pa.gov, or send the complaint in the mail to the department.
The inspections include information on nursing home patient care and building inspections. If a facility is cited for not following regulations during the survey, it must submit a plan of correction that includes what will be done to fix the issue(s) and a completion date for the resolution. The department will conduct a surprise follow-up inspection to ensure issues are resolved. Surveys are posted to the website 41 days after the survey is completed.
The Department of Health also conducts surveys on behalf of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS). These surveys include federal certification and recertification, complaint surveys, building safety surveys and others.
The department also may issue sanctions that could include a civil penalty, a ban on admissions, a license being revoked, or a facility being put on a provisional license, which requires, among other things, being subject to additional inspections.
The department maintains a searchable database, which allows the public to view patient care surveys, building safety surveys, size of the nursing home, type of ownership and additional information about each of the nursing homes in the state.
To provide data on the impact of COVID-19 in nursing homes, the department updates weekly a user-friendly dashboard to view the data reported to the federal government regarding COVID-19 cases, deaths, and vaccination rates among staff and residents in each nursing home from May 2020 to present.
Additionally, access to county level data for COVID-19 cases and deaths reported to PA-NEDSS, Pennsylvania’s Disease Surveillance System, among all long-term care facilities is available on the LTCF data page.
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