What Does a Nursing Home Inspector Do?

A nursing home inspector visits facilities to audit them for health and safety, confirming they are providing appropriate levels of care to residents. Inspections typically involve a team which can include registered nurses, fire safety professionals, social workers, and other people with relevant training. The inspectors conduct an unannounced site visit that may take several days so they can observe, perform interviews, and inspect documentation. At the end of the visit, they write up a report and determine whether the nursing home needs any warnings or sanctions.

Before an inspection, members of a team meet to discuss the facility. The nursing home inspector can review prior violations and safety concerns that may have arisen. If the inspection is being conducted in response to a specific complaint of neglect, abuse, or another safety issue, members of the team review and discuss the complaint. They use this information to develop a checklist for the facility to thoroughly check every aspect of the services provided.

In the observation component, the nursing home inspector watches patients, staff, and family members. This can include seeing how medications and meals are delivered, roaming through the facility to observe how people interact, and conducting physical inspections of kitchens, rooms, and other facilities. The goal is to spot safety issues like improperly stored food, a failure to identify a patient before providing medication, or abusive language from nursing home staff.

Interviews can include discussions with residents, staff, and family. The nursing home inspector asks about working and living conditions, specific concerns, and training. A series of sessions may be required to build trust and get useful information. For example, a member of the staff concerned about long hours or limited breaks might not open up about this in the first interview, but could report it in later interviews once the nursing home inspector becomes more familiar.

Documentation reviews are also part of the job. These duties include looking over intake paperwork as well as documentation on workers, facility maintenance, fire drills, and related subjects. If there are holes in the documentation, the nursing home inspector needs to find out why. Likewise, if documents show signs of problems like falsified information, indicators a resident is being abused, or inadequate tax withholding information for staff, these issues may be flagged.

Information from the inspection can be used to compile a complete report for regulatory agencies that oversee nursing homes. The nursing home inspector may also issue specific warnings or notices. In some cases, the inspection may result in a shutdown of a facility until it can resolve fundamental problems like a malfunctioning sprinkler system.