A recent Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission (JLARC) study in Virginia shows some of the state’s most vulnerable people in nursing homes are not being checked on enough.
The WTKR News 3 Investigative Team spoke to top state leadership to find out what they’re doing about some of the problems.
We've been reporting on issues in nursing homes and assisted living facilities for years.
Watch previous coverage: Understaffed, underinspected Virginia nursing homes might be putting patients at risk, reports say
Last spring, Debbie Scanlon told us she was horrified by the conditions at her sister’s nursing home.
Nursing homes, hospitals and home care facilities are monitored by a branch of the Virginia Department of Health.
The report released by JLARC highlights how staffing issues impacted the state's availability to investigate complaints and complete required federal inspections.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin said, "When we came in, in 2022, the Virginia Department of Health was very troubled, is how I’ll describe it, and they were troubled in lots of ways. One of them having been that they have not been able to really put together the organizational structure to provide the kinds of oversight necessary."
Watch related coverage: Lack of staff impacts wait times for Virginia nursing homes
The report found that 40 percent of Virginia's 290 nursing homes have not been inspected within the past two years, and some haven't been inspected since 2021.
According to VDH staff:
- 97 percent of home care organizations have not been inspected in at least two years and were overdue for a biennial licensure inspection, as of June 2024.
- 39 percent of nursing homes were overdue for their mandated biennial state licensure inspection as of August 2024;
- 99 percent of inpatient hospitals were overdue for their mandated biennial state licensure inspection as of August 2024
Nationwide, Virginia ranks 6th for the highest for the number of uninspected nursing homes within the past two years, according to the federal government.
Christopher Lindsay, the Chief Operating Officer at VDH, did an interview with us back in November on a number of issues related to the changes he is making at the agency.
“We have an opportunity in our inspection of licensing, of hospitals and nursing homes and we're putting dedicated attention to that—to making sure that we're staffing up those areas to make sure that patients continue to be safe in those areas,” said Lindsay.
Watch related coverage: State-of-the-art end-of-life care facility opens in Virginia Beach
Lindsay and Governor Youngkin said they’ve already implemented many changes to help staff, improve leadership and better manage the entire agency, including oversight on nursing homes.
“We’ve been working on lots of things in the Department of Health. In fact, the JLARC study was encouraging because everything they’ve listed, we’ve already been doing," said Youngkin. "We also need to address staffing levels in nursing homes legislatively, and that’s on the agenda for this year."
As for Scanlon, her sister has since passed away, but she hopes places with too many violations get shut down and there’s more oversight.
