Nursing Home Inspections

In reaction to a Freedom of Information Act demand by ProPublica, the government has launched unredacted write-ups of issues discovered during nursing home examinations around the country. We’re making them available these days for anyone who wants to obtain the complete editions. For several weeks now, ProPublica has made redacted editions of this same information available in an easily retrievable format in our Nursing Home Inspect device. These editions, which are posted on the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services website, Nursing Home Inspect, sometimes empty out patients’ age groups, health circumstances, schedules and recommended medicines.

nursing_homesThe organization has said the redactions are designed to balance individual comfort issues with the need to notify customers about the quality of care. ProPublica asked for the unredacted reviews because they are public records and because the included information can make them more useful. For example, prescribed information in the unredacted write-ups can help recognize situations in which sufferers obtained medicines such as antipsychotics that are risky for those with dementia.

Sufferers and workers are not determined in either the redacted or unredacted reviews. Nursing Home Inspect allows patients and their loved ones to recognize nursing homes in their states and recognize those with serious inadequacies and charges in the last three years. The entire national collection of reviews, record more than 267,000 inadequacies in nursing homes nationwide, is retrievable by keyword and key phrase. At this point, Nursing Home Inspect is constantly on the link to only the redacted examination reviews. To search through the unredacted editions, you’ll have to obtain them and use a program like Microsoft Excel or a text manager that enables you to search for keywords and phrases.