July 2003

GAO-03-561 Nursing Home Quality: Prevalence of Serious Problems, While Declining, Reinforces Importance of Enhanced Oversight

The proportion of nursing homes with serious quality problems remains unacceptably high, despite a decline in the incidence of such reported problems. Actual harm or more serious deficiencies were cited for 20 percent or about 3,500 nursing homes during an 18-month period ending January 2002, compared to 29 percent for an earlier period. Fewer discrepancies between federal and state surveys of the same homes suggests that state surveyors are doing a better job of documenting serious deficiencies and that the decline in serious quality problems is potentially real. Despite these improvements, the continuing prevalence of and state surveyor understatement of actual harm deficiencies is disturbing. For example, 39 percent of 76 state surveys from homes with a history of quality of- care problems - but whose current survey found no actual harm deficiencies - had documented problems that should have been classified as actual harm or higher, such as serious, avoidable pressure sores.