Nursing Home Info | Violation Info | Cost Reports | Sample FOIA
How To Get Information About Your Nursing Home
1. The Illinois Department of Public Health has some basic information about every licensed nursing home in Illinois at its website.
Among the information on the website is the kind of care for which the facility is licensed, how many licensed beds it has, how many (if any) Medicare and Medicaid beds it has, and a summary (several years old) of the age and primary diagnoses of its residents, and of the number of various kinds of nursing and non-nursing staff.
The IDPH website allows you to see information about only one nursing home at a time. The only way to compare information about different homes, is to copy the information and either print it, or save it to your computer.
2. The federal website, Medicare Nursing Home Compare, has some information about every nursing home in the Medicare or Medicaid programs. There is some data about nurse and CNA staffing ratios (the staffing numbers reflect staffing the week of the annual survey, and the week before) and how they compare to staffing averages in Illinois and throughout the country. There are also various measure of "quality." Many of the "quality" measures count the number of residents whose health has deteriorated in various ways since they entered the facility. Because the numbers are self-reported (by the nursing home), you should not consider them an invariably accurate description.
Pages 4 and 5 of the fact sheet on nursing home selection on our website explain the various quality measures.
3. Public Health rules allow people with serious criminal records to live in nursing homes, so long as the home takes appropriate measures to make sure that these residents do not endanger other residents, visitors, or staff. In order to find out whether their residents have criminal convictions in Illinois, nursing homes are required to do a criminal background check on all residents who are physically able to put other residents, staff, or visitors in danger. If a name-based background check is inconclusive, the nursing home is required to arrange for a fingerprint check.
There currently is no complete directory available of persons with criminal convictions living in Illinois nursing homes. (Remember: we are not saying that all people with criminal convictions, even serious criminal convictions, are dangerous. Some nursing home residents were convicted of crimes 30 or more years ago, and have been in no trouble ever since.)
There are two state websites that list the residences of some people in Illinois with serious criminal convictions. Illinois Department of Corrections parolee sex offender website lists people currently out on parole from the Department of Corrections for sex offenses. The Illinois State Police sex offender registry is a broader listing of registered sex offenders in the state, including some people who were convicted of crimes in other states. The State Police registry is the only place nursing homes are required to check, that has any information about out-of-state convictions.
Neither the Department of Corrections nor the State Police website can be searched directly by address; both can be searched by name, city, county, or zip code. So if you want to know if any residents of a nursing home are listed as sex offenders, you can type in the address or zip code of the nursing home, and see what information comes up.
The local nursing home resident ombudsman is supposed to be told about every nursing home resident in her/his area with a serious criminal history. The ombudsman should be able to tell you if any residents of a particular nursing home have criminal records, although [s]he probably cannot tell you their names.
Violation Information
1. The easiest place to get violation information about a single nursing home is at that nursing home. Every nursing home in Illinois is required to keep the last 5 years of its survey history - annual surveys, complaint investigations, follow-up surveys, notices of fines, plans of correction - available to any member of the public who wants to see them. They are usually kept either in the administrator's office or at the front desk: just ask. The latest survey is supposed to be posted in place easily accessible to members of the public. While you may think looking at 5 years' worth of records is a bit much, we do suggest reading records of at least the past 2 to 3 years, when choosing a nursing home.
If the facility refuses to let you see any material you are entitled to see, you can file a complaint with the Illinois Department of Public Health, 1-800-252-4343.
Going to a nursing home to look at violation records is not an option when trying to screen out facilities with unacceptable histories, from a long list of possible choices. There are several other ways to get at least some violation information about Illinois nursing homes.
2. The information on the Public Health website about each nursing home may also include violations for which the facility has been cited. To see what violation information is on the Public Health website, first choose a single nursing home, then click on "SURVEYS" on the right hand side of the page for that nursing home. The surveys (and, sometimes, facility responses) that are available on the website are shown with the date of the survey in blue. Fewer than half the surveys for many nursing homes are available on the IDPH website; many of those that are shown have no violations. The surveys that are listed with the date in light gray are not on the internet. To get them from IDPH, you must file a Freedom of Information request with IDPH.
3. You can make a Freedom of Information Act request to IDPH by sending an e-mail to Tom.Schafer@illinois.gov or writing to Freedom of Information Officer, Illinois Department of Public Health, 525-535 West Jefferson Street, Springfield, Illinois 62761. Click here for an example of a Freedom of Information Act request.
4. The federal website, www.Medicare.gov, has a summary of violations of federal nursing home requirements, committed by every nursing home in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The information on the federal website includes a count of violations for the past 3 years, along with information about the number of violations committed by this facility compares to averages for the state and the entire country. The federal information is sometimes out of date and incomplete. Information about specific violations includes only a summary of each violation and the "level" of violation. "Level" of violation means how many people it was considered to affect (only a few / more than a few / many) and how serious it was considered (no injury or risk of injury / risk of injury but no actual injury / actual serious injury / risk of life-threatening injury.)
5. If you are interested in a nursing home in suburban Cook County (other than Evanston,) or in Lake County, the ombudsman for that area will e-mail, fax or send you a detailed summary of the violation history of any facility in which you are interested. You can call 1-888-401-8200, and leave a message listing the facilities you are interested in, and your contact information. Or you can e-mail a request for the information you want to roneill@lafchicago.org.
6. Illinois Citizens for Better Care has copies of violations for every nursing home in Illinois. You can call us to get the information we have: 1-312-663-5120.
Cost Reports
Every nursing home in the Medicaid programs is required to file a complete description of its income and expenses every year with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (formerly the Illinois Department of Public Aid.) These cost reports are on the state website at http://www.hfs.illinois.gov/ costreports
Illinois Citizens for Better Care is currently doing analyses of these cost reports, including looking at what they show about facility staffing patterns. Within a few months we hope to be able to make our analyses available to people who want to know about staffing patterns and profits and losses for their nursing home.