(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog)
The Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has spent the past two years conducting a review of data on abuse and neglect in privatized group homes in three states, including Massachusetts.
In an August 21, 2013 letter written to U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson said his office had begun to examine data on admissions of persons from group homes and “nursing facilities” to hospital emergency rooms in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.
We obtained Levinson’s letter from the IG’s Freedom of Information Act Division. The letter promised to share the results of the IG’s findings with Senator Murphy’s office and left open the possibility of expanding the review. But the letter provided no details on how the review might be expanded.
Senator Murphy, who requested in March 2013 that the IG investigate group homes for people with developmental disabilities, has not responded to numerous requests from us for comment on the IG’s review.
It is not clear when the IG’s examination will be completed.
Despite what appear to be significant limitations in the scope of the analysis, the IG’s review appears to constitute one of the few instances in which the federal government has investigated the privatized group home system of care in the U.S. In contrast to that relative free ride given to the group home system, the federal government has filed dozens of lawsuits in recent years alleging substandard care in state-run, congregate-care facilities around the country.
There has been mounting evidence that abuse and neglect has been a continuing and growing problem in community-based, group homes. The IG investigation was requested by Murphy in the wake of a series of articles in The Hartford Courant that documented dozens of deaths, injuries, and other problems stemming from inadequate care and supervision in group homes in Connecticut.
Murphy asked the HHS IG to “focus on the prevalence of preventable deaths at privately run group homes across this nation and the widespread privatization of our delivery system.”
In his August 2013 letter in response to Murphy’s request, Levinson stated that for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, “we are analyzing data to identify instances when Medicaid beneficiaries were transferred from group homes or nursing facilities to hospitals for emergency treatment. We are analyzing data by facility to determine whether certain facilities have excessive rates relative to those of their peers.”
Due to the way states collect the data, the IG’s analysis would include all Medicaid patients and not only those with developmental disabilities, Levinson said.
Given the vagueness of Levinson’s description of his office’s review, we have a number of questions about it. Levinson’s letter, for instance, didn’t specify what he meant by “nursing facilities,” and didn’t indicate which “peers” the emergency hospital treatment rates are being compared to. Are the group homes and nursing facilities being compared to developmental centers, for instance? It’s also not clear what the data will mean if it lumps together people with and without developmental disabilities.
Moreover, it is not clear whether the IG’s review has included data on actual deaths in group homes, which is what Murphy specifically asked the IG to examine, or whether the review has included differences in mortality rates of persons transferred from state-run to privately run care. A number of studies have shown increases in mortality rates among those transferred individuals.
The VOR, a national advocacy organization for the developmentally disabled, pointed out in recent testimony to a congressional subcommittee that higher mortality rates have been documented in Virginia, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Georgia in the wake of the DOJ’s deinstitutionalization settlements.
Based on Levinson’s letter, the IG’s review also doesn’t appear to have covered issues such as the quality of care in general in group homes, and it does not appear to be concerned with financial aspects of privatized care. All of those things are long overdue for investigations at both the federal and state levels of government. In the meantime, the federal IG’s investigation appears to be at least a step in the right direction.
Will there be any investigation into how group homes are clustered in certain neighborhoods but non-existent in others? I realize that most group homes are well-run, however their presence in a neighborhood drives away many buyers and ushers in a general decline in the neighborhood.
Bluntly put, very few people would aspire to buy a house within sight of a group home for emotionally and behaviorally troubled teenage boys. Yet because of the Dover Amendment, there is no way for anyone to temper or regulate the concentration of group homes – not at the neighborhood, city/town, or state level.
I know that this may not be of concern to many because you don’t live near group homes, but it is a concern for people who find these facilities buying more and more properties in your neighborhood. A recent example in Springfield is that there were Boston-area investors looking to purchase single-family homes for conversion into group homeless shelters. That means these facilities get purchased in communities with the lowest real estate prices – also known as “poverty zoning”.
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on conditions that are not exactly optimal, as the administration would have us believe. It helps to explain why some of these houses are located in places that others would find undesirable for a home, such as on a busy highway, or isolated locations, not exactly the community the administration would have people believe it is.
They would also have people believe that there is some sort of acceptance and integration with the non-disclosure population…
I virtually never see any of these disabled persons anywhere in the community, and I don’t think I’m all that unique.