Medicare instructs inspectors to look for staffing inadequacies in homes that report suspiciously low numbers of registered nurses and weekend workers.
Death and its companion, grief, are often ignored at nursing homes and assisted living centers, yet ignoring the loss can lead to depression, staff burnout and other problems.
The study follows a Kaiser Health News and New York Times investigation that found nearly 1,400 nursing homes have reported fewer registered nurses on duty than Medicare requires or failed to provide reliable staffing information to the government.
The study follows a Kaiser Health News and New York Times investigation that found nearly 1,400 nursing homes have reported fewer registered nurses on duty than Medicare requires or failed to provide reliable staffing information to the government.
Low staffing is a root cause of many injuries in nursing homes. Kaiser Health News senior correspondent Jordan Rau explains how he connected the dots between manpower and risk at facilities nationwide, using a federa tool known as the Payroll-Based Journal.
Daily nursing home payroll records just released by the federal government show the number of nurses and aides dips far below average on some days and consistently plummets on weekends.