When choosing a daycare for your child or a nursing home for a loved one in Virginia, you can look up federal and state inspection results online. The same is not true when choosing a hospital.
In Virginia, the Department of Health is required by law to inspect hospitals every two years. Those findings are not published online, but the public can obtain them through public records requests.
In September, we learned through a public records request that those inspections had not happened in years at Richmond-area hospitals…