A State oversight of nursing homes done on Wednesday received a scathing performance audit, according to a report.
According to an oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services, the department is consistently failing to conduct timely investigations of nursing homes.
As many as 425 federally certified nursing homes had been operating in North Carolina, with 44,128 beds in total. The role of the DHHS (Division of Health Service Regulation) is to routinely inspect these nursing homes and investigate all the complaints around them.
The complaints are as follows:
● According to the auditor’s office, DHHS often did not complete those inspections within the time frame mandated by the state, which is March 1, 2021- Dec. 31, 2023.
● Also, The division did not complete its investigations of nursing home complaints within the state-prescribed time frame during the period of Jan. 1, 2019, to Dec. 31, 2023.
● The division did not verify the correction of nursing home deficiencies which were identified during the inspections of nursing homes that had been conducted during the period of Jan. 1, 2019, through June 30, 2022.