Healthcare Compliance Perspective – Elder Abuse Cases:
While states provide broad oversight, investigation and disciplinary assessment of healthcare providers, Compliance Officers and Compliance Committees must ensure that families and residents are encouraged to share all complaints with caregivers because state agencies cannot always be relied upon to communicate such concerns.
This past March, a report was made public that revealed a failure by the State of Minnesota’s Office of Health Facility Complaints (OJFC) to investigate elder abuse allegations numbering in the thousands. The underlying cause of this failure according to the Office of the Legislative Auditor is attributed to a workplace environment described as “dysfunctional and toxic.”
According to the report, only about 1,200 of the 24,000 elder abuse complaints reported in 2017 were investigated. That translates into only 1 out of every 20 potential elder abuse cases. After a report was filed, it took over a month (38 days avg.) before the victim was interviewed and two and one-half months (75 days) before the alleged perpetrator was interviewed. Altogether, it took nearly six months (about 140 days) for the agency to complete one investigation.
Poor managers, high staff turnover and low morale were cited as contributing factors to the backlog of abuse cases.
It was noted that the problem has taken a long time to get this bad and it will take some time to resolve it and get things back to where they need to be.
One of the first steps taken after the report made the allegations public, was the firing of the Minnesota Health Commissioner who was responsible for oversight of the OJFC.
The report also pointed out that elder abuse complaints have risen by 50 percent in the last five years.
Leading efforts by reform groups to lobby for “tougher criminal penalties against abusers, and new ways to monitor the care of residents in Long-Term Post-Acute Care centers is the AARP.
The Acting Human Services Commissioner commented in a written statement that the auditor’s report “raises many of the same issues DHs has been working with MDH to correct since January (2017).” He also indicated that progress is being made “to address backlogs in triaging and investigating reports.”
