Nonprofit and Government-Owned Nursing Homes Generally Complied With Federal Requirements Regarding the Infection Preventionist Position

Report Materials

• Full Report (PDF, 3.1 MB)
• Report Highlights (PDF, 342.6 KB)

Why OIG Did This Audit

• More than 1.3 million people live in nursing homes nationwide. These individuals are susceptible to a high number of health care-associated infections.
• Prior OIG audits found that nursing homes did not always comply with Federal regulations regarding designating an infection preventionist (IP) who met Federal requirements for that position.

What OIG Found

Three nonprofit and two Government-owned nursing homes may not have complied with the requirement that the IPs complete specialized infection prevention and control training prior to assuming the IP role.

On the basis of our sample results, we estimated that 117 nursing homes nationwide (99 of 3,294 nonprofit and 18 of 922 Government-owned) may not have complied with Federal regulations pertaining to IPs during our audit period. As a result, there may be increased health and safety risks for the residents and staff of these nursing homes.

What OIG Recommends

We recommend that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services instruct the State survey agencies to follow up with the five nursing homes (three nonprofit and two Government-owned) that may not have complied with Federal requirements to verify that they have taken corrective actions.

CMS concurred with our recommendation.