Search through details of pandemic inspection reports on southwestern IL nursing homes
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Southwest Illinois nursing homes with COVID infection errors had same issues for years
Search through details of pandemic inspection reports on southwestern IL nursing homes
Learn more about how and why the BND investigated southwestern IL nursing home errors
If you experience a problem with a southwestern IL nursing home, here’s what to do next
Three nursing homes didn’t separate residents infected with COVID-19 from others who weren’t sick.
A nurse practitioner used the same gloves to swab two residents’ throats to test for COVID-19 after the gloves touched the first resident’s lips.
A licensed practical nurse didn’t wear a face mask to bring medicine to a quarantine room while the resident sat on the side of the bed coughing.
And government inspectors were watching.
These errors were among 119 infection protocol violations that inspectors say happened in nursing homes across southwestern Illinois during the coronavirus pandemic.
Few people were allowed inside nursing homes as they responded to the pandemic: Residents. Workers. And government inspectors, whose reports on their inspections at nursing homes offer a glimpse of what it was like behind closed doors during lockdowns.
The Belleville News-Democrat has built a database based on the publicly-available reports with details about what inspectors saw and heard in nursing homes and read in documents between May 2020 and March 2021.
In their reports, inspectors describe what they determined were nursing home errors, as well as the challenges facilities faced.
The BND’s database contains only the metro-east’s citations related to COVID-19 for what inspectors said were violations of “infection prevention and control” protocols for nursing homes.
The citations included nursing homes’ failures to separate residents infected with COVID-19 from others, which was considered the most serious error, and workers’ failures to clean their hands, wear personal protective equipment like gloves and masks and change out of gear that could have been contaminated, which were the most common errors.
It’s not unusual for a nursing home to receive a citation after an inspection. Most nursing homes have been cited over “infection control deficiencies” or other types of deficiencies.
Each horizontal row in the database represents one protocol that inspectors say workers violated, as categorized by the BND.
The BND categorized protocols based on inspectors’ summaries of their findings in each report. Sometimes reports detailed multiple protocol violations, so there may be multiple rows in the database for a single inspection.
Here are some tips for using the database:
- Look at the “location” column to see when and where the inspection happened. Hover over or click on the location column to see a small pop-up window with information about that nursing home’s ownership type, bed count and how many residents it had at the time of the inspection.
- You can see more information by hovering over or clicking on the other columns, too. Hover over or click on the “protocols” column to learn whether a nursing home was cited for what inspectors said was that same error multiple times since 2017, an indication it was a recurring problem in recent years, which persisted into the pandemic. (The BND looked through the inspection history of the nursing homes that inspectors cited in the pandemic, including reports from 2017, 2018, 2019 and the first few months of 2020 before efforts to fight the virus, like lockdowns, started in Illinois nursing homes.)
- Hover over or click on the “violation details” column to learn how many residents were affected by the error or errors described in a single report and how severely they were harmed or could potentially have been harmed, according to inspectors.
- Type a nursing home’s name or city into the database’s search bar to filter it so you only see violations from that facility or that town.
- You can also filter the database by searching other terms. For example, typing “coughing” into the search bar will show you where inspectors noted they saw residents or employees coughing, which is one of the ways the coronavirus can spread between people. Type “dementia” or “Alzheimer’s” into the search bar to read about times managers and employees struggled with the unique challenges of those patients.
Here is a list of the protocols included in the database. You can search for any of these protocols to filter the database to only that category:
Use PPE
Wash hands
Ask residents to wear masks
Screen for symptoms
Socially distance
Disinfect equipment
Disinfect surfaces
Throw away contaminated items
Isolate sick residents
Send sick staff home
Post signs
Suspend group activities
Ask residents to stay in rooms
Quarantine exposed residents
Follow quarantine rules
Monitor residents
Track infections
Assign staff to COVID-19 care
Close doors
Close windows
Cover clean laundry
Keep contaminated items in room
Provide PPE
Test for COVID-19
Update residents and families
To read the full inspection reports:
- On the Illinois Department of Public Health website, ltc.dph.illinois.gov/webapp/LTCApp/ltc.jsp, search for a nursing home and then click “surveys.” Click on a date that an inspection happened to view the report.
- On the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services website, medicare.gov/care-compare, search for a nursing home and then click “view inspection results.” Click on a date that an inspection happened to view the report.
The BND found two inspection reports changed during its investigation of metro-east nursing homes, later omitting some details that had initially been published. The BND left those details out of the database until the Illinois Department of Public Health could explain why the changes occurred. A spokesperson for the department didn’t respond by press time.
This story was originally published January 2, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
