Health Highlights: Sept. 29, 2008
Sept. 30 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:
More Than 90% of Nursing Homes Violate U.S. Standards: Report
More than 90 percent of U.S. nursing homes were cited last year for violating at least one federal health and safety standard, The New York Times reported Monday.
About 17 percent of nursing homes had violations that led to "actual harm or immediate jeopardy" to residents, according to the report by the inspector general to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Citations were issued for violations including infected bedsores, drug errors, resident malnutrition, and patient abuse or neglect, the newspaper reported.
About 37,150 complaints were sent to inspectors last year about nursing home conditions, of which 39 percent were validated, the report said. Some 20 percent of the verified complaints involved patient abuse or neglect.
Two-thirds of nursing homes are owned by companies that make a profit, 27 percent are owned by nonprofit corporations, and 6 percent are owned by government entities.
Some 94 percent of for-profit homes were cited last year, as were 88 percent of nonprofit homes, and 91 percent of government-owned homes, according to the report by HHS Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson.
Levinson said Medicaid was sometimes charged for services that "were not provided, or were so wholly deficient that they amounted to no care at all."
More than 1.5 million people live in 15,000 U.S. nursing homes. Violation rates ranged from 76 percent in Rhode Island to 100 percent in Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the newspaper reported.
In related news, state Medicaid organizations will spend an estimated $1.6 trillion on long-term care over the next two decades, a study by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) found.
When federal matching funds are added to the tab, total government expenditures for long-term care will burgeon to $3.7 trillion, the analysis predicted.
It would mean that Medicaid spending for long-term care would rise faster than overall health care spending, Medicare, or the Gross Domestic Product, according to an AHIP media release.
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