Part I – Researching Nursing Homes: How Do I View Nursing Home Inspection Reports in Florida?
Looking for prior AHCA inspection reports of your nursing home? Researching survey results and citations of local nursing homes? Our Florida nursing home lawyers explain in detail how to locate prior nursing home inspection reports.
(For part II of the “Researching Nursing Home” series describing, “What Can I Learn From an Inspection Report”, click here)
(For part III of the “Researching Nursing Home” series describing, “How Can I Find Prior Lawsuits Against a Nursing Home, click here)
All Nursing Home are NOT Created Equal
There are many reasons why you might be looking into nursing homes for a loved one. Sickness, surgery and chronic care needs all spike as elders in your family age. There are other options for less severe needs, such as home care or assisted living, but nursing homes are often the right choice for more dedicated care and supervision. Once you have decided that a nursing home is the appropriate choice for a loved one, you must decide which nursing home is best. One key factor to consider when choosing a home is looking at the nursing home inspection report history. Nursing homes that have frequent citations are more likely to instances of nursing home abuse. In this article, you will learn how to use three Internet sources to view nursing home inspection reports in the state of Florida.
Not all nursing homes are created equal. Some nursing homes are run by caring individuals who take pride in treating and supervising our most vulnerable loved ones—in contrast, other homes are run by shadowy corporate interests whose sole mission is to make a profit. It may be very difficult to determine whether a nursing home views your loved one as a human being or a dollar sign by only visiting their website or viewing the home in person without further research. One great method to check a nursing home’s performance is by viewing nursing home inspection reports, which can be found using three sources.
Source #1 – FloridaHealthFinder.gov
FloridaHealthFinder.gov is a very useful tool to view Florida nursing home inspection reports. First, you need to click on the “Facility/Provider Type:” drop down in the “General Search” box on the main page. Choose “Nursing Home” (note that this site also can be used for other facilities, such as an assisted living facility). Next, enter the name of the nursing home in the blank space next to “Name:” in the same box. The “Name:” will auto-populate, so it is best to type the beginning of the nursing home’s name, and scroll down to the appropriate official title to ensure that you have chosen the correct home. Once chosen, click the red “Search” button at the bottom of the box, and you should be sent to a new page.
The new page should list the name of the nursing home, along with the address and phone number. This is a great chance to confirm that you are looking at the appropriate nursing home. If not, restart the process as described above and make sure you choose the correct home.
Once you have confirmed the nursing home is correct, click on the name of the nursing home (the red hyperlink under the “Name” box) and you will be connected to a dedicated page filled with information about the home. To access the inspection reports, click the red hyperlink titled “Inspection Reports” under the blue lettering “AHCA Reports”.
Source #2 – AHCA.myflorida.com
If you followed the steps above, you will be sent to the AHCA website for the relevant nursing home, which will allow you to access the home’s statements of deficiencies. On this page, you can view statements of deficiencies going back a number of years, along with the statuses of the inspections. If there are deficiencies cited, an inspection report will be available on the Medicare website (mentioned below), along with other useful information to assess the quality of care provided at a home.
Source #3 – Medicare.gov
Once you have determined that a home has a cited deficiency on the AHCA website, you can find the full report on the Medicare website. Begin by typing “Florida” in the location box and clicking the state of Florida option in the dropdown menu. Next, type the name of the facility and select it in the drop down menu and hit the green “Search” button. Finally, click “Health Inspections” to learn more about health inspections at the relevant nursing home.
Summary
With the help of this article, you now know how to navigate FloridaHealthFinder.gov, ACHA.myflorida.com, and Medicare.gov to find health inspections reports for a Florida nursing home. Nursing home inspection reports can show prior instances of red flags, such as bedsores, falls, or wrongful death. In Part II of the “Researching Nursing Homes” series, we will discuss what you can learn from reviewing these inspection reports in greater detail.
