Consumer Complaints in Nursing Homes: Analyzing Substantiated Single-Allegation Complaints to Deficiency Citations

The Importance of Zero-Deficiency Complaints in Nursing Homes: A Mere Consequence or Serious Concern?

“…Complaints that are categorized at intake as immediate jeopardy (IJ), meaning residents are at risk of serious harm or death, require investigation within 2 business days; in contrast, non-IJ complaints alleging a high potential for resident harm require investigation within 10 business days and those having a medium potential for harm to residents should be investigated within 45 business days (Hansen et al, 2019). Prior research has found evidence that many substantiated complaints prioritized as IJ lead to no deficiencies (Bhattacharyya et al, 2023c). The present research provides a possible explanation for these inconsistencies, which further points towards the possibility that the failure to investigate complaints in a timely way may lead to serious quality deficits going undetected and unremedied.…”

“…Further, they may not be able to make a coherent case or provide informed consent to proceed should the nature of the case make confidentiality impossible to guarantee. In fact, analyzing the same dataset, one recent study found that, compared to NHs with medium-dementia prevalence, NHs with low proportions of residents with ADRD had higher total and substantiated complaints, whereas NHs with high proportions of residents with ADRD had fewer total and substantiated complaints (Bhattacharyya et al, 2023c). While for NHs with high proportions of residents with ADRD, this would reduce the number of complaints filed, and it is unrelated to the question of how complaints lead to deficiency citations.…”