Despite years of pressure from advocates for the elderly and others, the Pennsylvania Department of Health continues to do a poor job of investigating complaints about nursing home care and fails to properly assess the significance of harm to patients, according to a new report by Community Legal Services of Philadelphia.
From 2015 through 2017, nursing-home inspectors dismissed 85 percent of complaints against Philadelphia nursing homes as unsubstantiated, just a small improvement from the previous three-year period, when they said 92 percent of complaints were unfounded, Sam Brooks, a senior attorney at Community Legal Services, found in a review of Department of Health surveys.
