A list comprised of the nation’s worst nursing homes now includes six facilities from South Dakota, according to the South Dakota Searchlight.
Each month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services releases its updated list of facilities with the Special Focus Facility (SFF) designation. These are nursing homes that have a history of serious quality issues and deficiencies. They are included in a special program to stimulate improvements in their quality of care. The program includes increased oversight, more frequent surveys, and a requirement to improve or risk losing their Medicare/Medicaid certification.
Six of South Dakota’s 96 nursing homes were included in the April report. Five of them are eligible for the Special Focus Facility program: Avantara Norton in Sioux Falls, Riverview Healthcare Center in Flandreau, Good Samaritan Society Sioux Falls Village, Lake Andes Senior Living and Wilmot Care Center. The sixth, Dells Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Dell Rapids, has been in the program for nearly two years.
The SFF list is developed from the last three standard health survey inspections and the last three years of complaint survey performance. The results are converted into points based on the number of deficiencies cited, and the scope and severity level of those citations. The more deficiencies that are cited, and the more cited at higher levels of scope and severity, the more points are assigned.
The Searchlight report notes that because the number of special-focus facilities is capped, even those with the lowest quality ratings cannot be added to the list until other homes in the same state already in the program are terminated from Medicare and Medicaid or improve and “graduate” from the program.
The South Dakota nursing home cited for the most deficiencies, 19 since the start of 2024, was Dells Nursing and Rehab Center. The facility has been fined nearly $68,000 in the last three years. It was flagged for “immediate jeopardy” to its residents after a resident left the facility without staff knowledge for a third time in a year. The last two times, the patient was found wandering the facility parking lot. The first time, the resident was found a mile away. An alarm was set on the resident’s tracking device to alert staff if the resident left the facility. The facility was also found to be noncompliant for infection control during an inspection in March.
Lake Andes Senior Living has been cited 18 times since the start of 2024 and was fined $91,601 in the last three years. The home was flagged for immediate jeopardy to patient health in two citations last September, including not notifying four diabetic residents’ doctors when their blood sugar levels went outside a normal range and failing to manage and prevent a COVID outbreak among residents.
To avoid situations where a facility remains a Special Focus Facility for a prolonged period of time, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services established criteria that could result
in the facility’s termination from the Medicare and/or Medicaid programs. SFFs with deficiencies cited at Immediate Jeopardy on any two surveys while in the SFF program, will be considered for discretionary termination.
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