Federal officials have placed two Maryland nursing homes on a nationwide watch list that has been made public as a way to alert consumers and push owners to improve conditions.
The "Special Focus Facility" list currently comprises 131 nursing homes that have provided consistently poor care over three years. As a result, they must be inspected twice a year, instead of once, and face possible penalties. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services began to publish the names online in November after criticism that the decade-old list had been provided to industry lobbyists and not to the public.
CMS released more data on troubled facilities in response to advocates for nursing home residents, said Bob Bronaugh, vice chairman of Voices for Quality Care, a nonprofit group based in Leonardtown. "It's a great tool to help family members in selecting a facility," he said.
In Maryland, ManorCare-Rossville in Baltimore County and the Waldorf Center in Charles County were listed because of serious violations of federal and state regulations, said Wendy Kronmiller, director of the state Office of Health Care Quality.
"There is a pattern of poor care that doesn't seem to lift itself," she said.
Her office, part of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, performs inspections and imposes sanctions. It has denied payments from Medicare and Medicaid for new admissions to the 172-bed ManorCare-Rossville as a result of the pattern of violations, Kronmiller said.
CMS placed the Baltimore County facility on the list in January. An update of the list posted last week has Manor Care-Rossville under the category "facilities that have not improved." In April, state inspectors returned to the nursing home and verified that it had corrected problems found in January. CMS notes that state governments enter inspections into CMS' databases and "data lags of up to several months can occur" from when inspections are conducted and updates are posted.
CMS also categorizes nursing homes that have "shown improvement." Facilities are removed from the list if they sustain "significant improvements in quality of care" for about a year, federal officials say.
Ohio-based HCR ManorCare said in a written statement that ManorCare-Rossville has made several management changes, including "adding tenured leadership to the administrative staff."
"ManorCare takes the survey process very seriously and has high standards for employees and the level of care they deliver," said a company spokeswoman, Kelly Kessler.
