Medicare paid $5.1B for poor nursing home care
March 5, 2013Feb. 28, 2013 By: GARANCE BURKE – SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Medicare paid billions in taxpayer dollars to nursing homes nationwide that were not meeting basic requirements to look after their residents, government investigators have found.
The report, released Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general, said Medicare paid about $5.1 billion for patients to stay in skilled nursing facilities that failed to meet federal quality of care rules in 2009, in some cases resulting in dangerous and neglectful conditions.
One out of every three times patients wound up in nursing homes that year, they landed in facilities that failed to follow basic care standards laid out by the federal agency that administers Medicare, investigators estimated. Read more