The report, which was released this week, found that more than 90% of the nation’s nursing homes were cited for federal violations last year. While Georgia state officials say they agree with HHS’ assessment, they argue that the numbers look worse than they really are. A total 88% of Georgia’s nursing homes were cited, according to HHS. But speaking to Atlanta’s public radio station WABE 90.1 FM, a Georgia state health official said that most of those infractions were for minor offenses, like housekeeping and maintenance issues, or food issues.

Idaho health officials share much the same view of the HHS report. All of Idaho’s homes received a citation, according to the report. A CBS affiliate in Boise spoke to one Idaho health official who said that his state reports even the tiniest infractions, unlike other states. He notes that, while an average of 17% of nursing homes nationwide were cited for deficiencies that caused harm or danger to residents, that number was only 3% in Idaho.

Rhode Island fared much better than some other states, the report found. Some 76% of its nursing homes were cited for an infraction. And the average number of citations per home was 2.5, far lower than any other state in the union.

“It was gratifying to see that our state did better than anyone else with respect to the number and percentage of deficiencies,” Virginia Burke, president of the Rhode Island Health Care Association told McKnight’s.

But Burke, like her counterparts in other states, also doesn’t feel the survey process is entirely fair. It’s not a very good stand-alone measure of quality care, and a lot of it is arbitrary, she says.

“You have to look at a number of quality measures before you can make a broad statement about the quality of care in one state versus another,” Burke said.

More than 90 percent of nursing homes were cited for violations of U.S. health and safety standards last year, and for-profit homes were more likely to have problems than other types of nursing homes, federal investigators say in a report issued on Monday.

About 17 percent of nursing homes had deficiencies that caused “actual harm or immediate jeopardy” to patients, said the report, by Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Problems included infected bedsores, medication mix-ups, poor nutrition and abuse and neglect of patients.

Inspectors received 37,150 complaints about conditions in nursing homes last year, and they substantiated 39 percent of them, the report said. About one-fifth of the complaints verified by federal and state authorities involved the abuse or neglect of patients.

About two-thirds of nursing homes are owned by for-profit companies, while 27 percent are owned by nonprofit organizations and 6 percent by government entities, the report said.

Source: International Resource Report