OIG report on COVID-19 infection rates
By Patti Cullen, CAE | January 27, 2023 | SNF/NF providers
The US Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report last week (OEI-02-20-00491) titled: “
More Than a Thousand Nursing Homes Reached Infection Rates of 75 Percent or More in the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic; Better Protections Are Needed for Future Emergencies.”
Key takeaways
More than 1,300 nursing facilities had extremely high infection rates—75% or more—during these surges. For-profit nursing facilities made up a disproportionate percentage of these facilities. Nursing facilities with extremely high infection rates experienced an average overall mortality rate approaching 20%—roughly double that of other nursing facilities. For comparison, in 2019 the average mortality rate in these same nursing facilities was 6%. High COVID-19 transmission in a county did not always lead to nursing facilities in that county reaching extremely high infection rates. Significant changes are needed to protect residents and better prepare for future health emergencies.
OIG recommendation:
We recommend that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), as it supports the administration’s initiative, take the following actions: (1) re-examine current nursing staff requirements and revise them as necessary; (2) improve how surveys identify infection control risks to nursing home residents and strengthen guidance on assessing the scope and severity of those risks; and (3) target nursing homes in most need of infection control intervention, and provide enhanced oversight and technical assistance to these facilities as appropriate. CMS concurred with the intent of the first and third recommendations and neither concurred nor non-concurred with the second recommendation.
View the
HHS-OIG's Oversight of COVID-19 Response and Recovery for more information.
Patti Cullen, CAE | President/CEO |
pcullen@careproviders.org | 952-851-2487