wtf4527

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback. Haven't been able to get on here and reply. Yeah I'm not sure if administration is making a complaint or not. We currently have a consultant helping us with our plan of correction and even she says that the survey team was exceptionally brutal. Also--we found out that one evening one of the surveyors took our incident reports that they were reviewing with her when she left the facility for the day. That has never happened before either. I don't know if we can request a different team or not. It would be nice if the state health dept sent along an advocate for the facility during the survey process to kind of "referee". I think that should be a requirement. Hopefully we survive this. I don't know what our community will do if we don't.

They have been extremely brutal this year. They extended our survey and tomorrow will be day number 8 with them. We have an IJ tag for med errors that were all resolved and nothing bad happened as a result of them. No actual harm came to a resident as the IJ tag states. Our poor DON and Administrator have both put in like 80+ hours in the past week. Also the DON has to face the board of nursing and is very fearful of losing her license right now. We follow all our policies and protocols at all times. These med errors were just human errors and not on any controls or "major" meds. It just feels like sometimes their goal is to get us shut down. We are a small, privately owned facility and the fines will be devastating. We follow their guidelines and algorithms but are told that it is all "open to interpretation" and get tagged anyways. When we ask them for help the say "well follow your facility policies". Okay--but that is never good enough!!

But what if the survey staff are extremely hostile towards facility staff?? The team we get every year is horrible. Even family members and residents become very upset with them. One family member became very tearful and ripped them a new one!! Do they have to report that?? Or should the facility?? How do you make a complaint about a state surveyor?? This same team seems to make violations up. We follow what they want us to do but then tag us for it anyway. Have you ever heard of a tag for "prohibiting the resident's right to fall"?? We made interventions that were approved by the resident and her family due to her frequently falling but still received this tag?? Also received a tag for med errors but state surveyors could not provide us with statistical info. They told our Medical Director that "it just seems like a lot". And gave us an IJ tag. Awesome.

Does anyone know how to submit a complaint against health department surveyors?? We have a team that has issued our facility with an IJ tag two yrs in a row now when we have never had one in the 18yrs I have worked there. This particular team upset a family last year with the IJ tag and refused to talk to the family. We were able to prove the IJ tag was false and they lifted it. This year was the same thing but a family member took it upon themselves to barge in on the surveyor team and give them a piece of their mind as their loved one was on hospice care and actively dying. This family member was offended and very tearful that the surveyors implicated that their family member was not taken care of properly. The surveyors then accused staff of telling the family member this information even though it had not been shared with staff. This same team also said that a family member reported an incident to them that was never reported to us. We investigated and questioned staff to find out that it was not a case of abuse or neglect. They were satisfied with our findings and cleared us of that but then ten minutes later stated that the team determined that we were still in violation because we did not report the incident via the health department website even though they were present in the facility and the incident was initially reported to them. This all happened after their encounter with the upset family member and after our MD and NP challenged them. We are a good facility and take extra steps to be in compliance and provide exceptional care. Most of our residents and their families are related to staff or friends of staff or known in our small close community. We feel this particular team has a vendetta against us. HELP!!!