Minneapolis-Area Nursing Homes Need Greater Oversight: Report

ST. LOUIS PARK, MN — Eleven Minnesota nursing homes were included on a report of more than 400 across the country in need of greater oversight for health and safety violations, according to a federal report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging. Of the nursing homes in Minnesota that made the list, five are in the Minneapolis area.

The facilities were identified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for patterns of violations, KSTP-TV reported, comprising 3 percent of Minnesota's nursing homes. The state has about 375 nursing facilities that serve 40,000 residents.

Minneapolis-area nursing homes included on the list are:

• The Estates at St. Louis Park: 3201 Virginia Ave. S., St. Louis Park
• Victory Health + Rehabilitation Center: 512 49th Ave. N., Minneapolis
• Brookview, a Villa Center: 7505 Country Club Dr., Golden Valley
• Southside Care Center: 2644 Aldrich Ave. S., Minneapolis
• The Emeralds at St. Paul: 420 Marshall Ave., St. Paul

See the full list of nursing homes included on the recent report.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in April revised its inspection process and began providing improved staffing details and new quality metrics. The changes were aimed at providing more transparent and meaningful information about the quality of care that residents receive.

The agency also is once again providing health inspection ratings, which were recently unfrozen. Now, every long-term care facility has had an opportunity to answer questions using the new survey process, according to CMS.

The threshold for staffing levels is also much more stringent now. Under the previous method, automatic one-star ratings (out of five) would be doled out to nursing homes that reported having no registered nurse on site for at least seven days in a quarter. That threshold has since been lowered to four days.

Nursing homes provide round-the-clock care to people who can’t be cared for at home and staffing has the “greatest impact” on the quality of care, the federal agency said — more staff, better quality. The updates will hopefully improve quality industry-wide, the agency said, and give consumers more confidence in their decisions.

“CMS is committed to safeguarding the health and safety of nursing home residents by ensuring they are receiving the highest quality of care possible,” agency Administrator Seema Verm said in a news release.

The changes appear to have had a wide-ranging effect. There are more than 15,000 Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing homes in the country, and the CMS doled out one-star ratings to over 1,600 of them, according to Kaiser Health News. Most were reportedly downgraded because payroll records showed no registered nurse hours for at least four days. Other homes reportedly failed to submit payroll documents or couldn’t be verified.

CMS is a federal agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It administers the Medicare program and works with state governments to administer Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and health insurance portability standards.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.