October 16th, 2017 by WCBC Radio

Maryland lags most of the nation in inspecting high-priority nursing home complaints — a problem past administrations have promised to fix, but that continues to vex state health officials — a federal inspector general has found. The Baltimore Sun reports the state failed to investigate nearly 650 allegations of harm at Maryland nursing homes within a required 10-day window, meaning the state missed the federal deadline 74 percent of the time, the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported.

Maryland ranked 7th worst in the nation for timely investigations of high-level complaints, according to a Baltimore Sun analysis of the report’s data.

The problem of late investigations at Maryland nursing homes has spanned at least four gubernatorial administrations — federal auditors found similar delays in the state in 1999, 2006 and 2011.