Two states, Maryland and Illinois, are investigating to discover the underlying causes of these complaints.Maryland is suing one small chain of nursing homes for Medicaid fraud. It seems that more than half of all involuntary discharges in that state have come from this chain. According to Maryland’s attorney general, “The odds of getting evicted from one of this chain’s nursing homes is about 100 times that of other nursing homes in the state.”The suit alleges that the company charged the state for services it didn’t deliver, specifically for discharge planning. Nursing homes are supposed to make sure a resident has a safe place to go, but these nursing homes sent residents with complex medical needs to homeless shelters or to unlicensed board-and-care facilities.
The company’s motivation was purely financial, says Maryland’s attorney general, and to understand his argument you need to know two things. First, Medicare pays nursing homes a lot more than Medicaid does. And, second, Medicare payments for long-term care only last for 100 days. The nursing home chain being sued evicted hundreds of residents just as they were transitioning from Medicare to the lower-paying Medicaid.
In Illinois, concern over nursing home evictions is greater than a single nursing home chain. It seems that nursing home evictions there have more than doubled in the last five years for which data is available. The state’s senate has proposed legislation to crack down on nursing homes that improperly discharge residents, and there are plans to “beef-up” enforcement of staffing standards.
It seems that a number of nursing homes have made financial decisions to show preference to residents who are compliant and do not require too much staff time. So, when a resident doesn’t fit that mold, they essentially drop them at the hospital and walk away.
That is what happened to one 57-year-old Chicago man who first went to a nursing home in 2012 after losing his right leg. He also had other injuries from a previous accident. He claims that he was evicted because he complained about staffing levels and about not getting the physical therapy he needed to use a new prosthetic.
The facility accused the man of being aggressive and schizophrenic with manic depression- none of which were support by the man’s hospital progress notes. It took the hospital 102 days to find another home for him, and during that entire time he remained in the psychiatric ward.
Top Five Complaints about Nursing Homes, FY2015
- Discharge/eviction-planning, notice, procedure and implementation, including abandonment
- Failure to respond to requests for assistance
- Staff attitudes (dignity and respect)
- Medications (administration and organization)
- Resident conflict, including roommates
