A federal watchdog agency remains hot on its investigation of nursing homes’ compliance with infection control regulations — and how the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services oversees their progress.
The Office of Inspector General on Wednesday released a list of its top 25 unimplemented recommendations of 2020. CMS’ oversight of nursing home infection control compliance remained No. 1.
The federal investigation into compliance has persisted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Infection prevention and control decencies have been among the top survey citations for nursing home providers this year.
The OIG noted that states conducted onsite surveys at 31% of nursing homes between March and May 2020, but rates of surveys varied across states. It also said states have raised concerns about survey backlogs as a result of CMS’ temporary suspension of standard surveys and high-priority complaint surveys.
The agency recommended that CMS assess nursing homes’ results of infection control surveys and revise the survey as appropriated. Also: Clarify expectations for states to complete backlogs of standard surveys and high priority complaint surveys. CMS neither concurred with nor opposed the recommendation.
“CMS described actions that it has taken to address the recommendation, such as continuing to assess and revise the infection control survey and issuing guidance regarding how States are to resume onsite surveys when they have the resources to do so,” the OIG said.
