Nursing Home Survey Process

Nursing homes are generally surveyed on an annual basis by the Ohio Department of Health. These surveys are unannounced and can occurr 9 months to 15 months after the last survey date, this is called the survey window. These surveys are completed by 3 to 5 surveyors and last between 4 and 5 days in general. I want to describe this process and what facilities do to maintain the standards set forth by the Ohio Department of Health and Federal regulations. Nursing homes must always be in compliance with these regulations not only during the survey window. These rules and regulations are the minimum of what a facility should do. Nursing homes must strive to do more than what is expected. Sometimes the federal rules will be more strict than the state and visa versa. What this means is the the strictest rule is what is expected during a survey. An example of this is nursing assistant staff requirements. The state requires a PPD (paid per patient day) of 2.0 and the federal rules require 1 NA's to 15 residents. The PPD is based on the total number of residents and is often more than 1 NA to 15 residents. All areas of the nursing home are surveyed during this process not just nursing. The survey team look at environment, dietary, business practices, human resources, contract services and many other aspects of the nursing home. There are other types of surveys that occur including complaint surveys, federal surveys and OSHA surveys. A complaint survey is conducted when someone calls the Ohio Department of Health with a concern or complaint. The department of health is required to look into all concerns or complaints. They do this by coming into the nursing home immediately or investigating during the annual survey. A federal survey is conducted on a much more random basis. A facility could go years without a federal survey. These are conducted in much the same way as a state survey.A Federal Survey may also be completed following an annual survey and is called a look behind. This survey is conducted to see if the same findings are determined.