The New Jersey State Comptroller issued a report on February 2, 2022, identifying the state’s 15 lowest-rated nursing homes. Each of these nursing homes had earned a “one-star” ranking by CMS, the lowest possible rating, and has repeatedly failed to improve care delivery.
Persistent One-Star Ratings
The State Comptroller based their report on public data from the U.S. Department of Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The CMS rating system is a nationally recognized and accepted measure of LTC performance. CMS uses three measures to generate the overall nursing home rating. These measures are health inspections, quality measures and staffing.
At the time of the report, each of these nursing homes had received a one-star rating in the first month of each quarter for six of the previous eight quarters in 2020 and 2021. Additionally, the State Comptroller examined these LTCs not only in terms of their performance for the past eight quarters, but also looking back eight years to 2013. The State Comptroller’s report, including the list of lowest-rated nursing homes, can be found here.
CMS most recently updated its ratings on March 30, 2022. At that time, nine out of the 15 nursing homes identified by the New Jersey State Comptroller’s report continued to operate with a one-star rating. Five long term care homes had improved to a 2-star (below average) rating, and only one LTC on the list had achieved a 3-star (average) rating.
Who is Affected?
The nursing homes on this list house nearly 1,850 Medicaid beneficiaries, accounting for nearly 6.5% of the Medicaid recipients in New Jersey long term care facilities. However, the State Comptroller’s list does not include all one-star New Jersey nursing homes. When you examine all one-star New Jersey nursing homes, over 2,900 New Jersey residents currently live in 1-star rated facilities. This means that each day thousands of residents receive health care services from nursing homes that have been repetitively cited by state inspectors for serious, widespread, or uncorrected deficiencies that place patient safety at high risk.
Resident Safety at Risk
According to state comptroller, 45.2% of one-star facilities nationwide have been cited for an “immediate jeopardy” violation. Immediate jeopardy is a situation in which the nursing home’s non-compliance with state or federal requirements has caused, or is likely to cause, serious injury, impairment, or death to a resident. In comparison, only 0.1% of the nation’s “five-star” facilities had an immediate jeopardy citation.
Additionally, analysis of CMS data determined that one-star nursing homes are more than 400 times as likely to have an actual harm citation on their most recent survey than a five-star nursing homes. This means that residents living in one-star nursing homes have greater exposure to situations that compromise resident safety while living in a one-star nursing home.
There has been a reinvigorated effort to crack down on the quality of care being provided by New Jersey’s nursing homes since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that spread rapidly through many of these facilities. Over 8,000 residents have died of COVID-related causes in New Jersey nursing homes.
Among the nursing homes named in the report was the Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center, which was fined $220,235 in fines and penalties for failures in infection control practices when 17 resident bodies were found in a makeshift morgue in April 2020. While the facility has been renamed to Woodland Behavioral and Nursing Center, it remains under the same ownership. The nursing home’s one star-rating persists as of March 30, 2022.
Contact the Wieand Law Firm, LLC Today!
If your loved one has been suffered a preventable injury while living at low-ranked New Jersey nursing home, contact the nursing home neglect lawyers at the Wieand Law Firm. Our experienced and compassionate lawyers tackle the tough cases to hold nursing homes responsible when preventable injuries occur. We believe no resident should be harmed by poor care and understaffing at a low-ranked New Jersey nursing home. Contact us today at 215-666-7777 or send us a message via the online form on this website to speak directly with a nursing home neglect lawyer.
