Long-Term Care Survey Alert

If you've met the regs, you may prevail at IDR.

You have to know when to hold and when to fold, as the song goes. That's certainly true in deciding whether to battle a survey citation. But if you feel the facility's care met the regulatory requirements, standing your ground can pay off in clearing the facility's record.

Example: Surveyors cited one facility when a resident undergoing restraint reduction suffered a fall during the survey. "The resident had experienced no falls for over a year before we started the restraint reduction," says Kathy Hurst, RN, JD, director of operations for Anaheim, CA-based TSW Management Group, which owns and manages nursing homes in California. The fall occurred when the man jumped out of his wheelchair because he mistakenly thought the activities bus was leaving him, Hurst relates. The facility challenged the citation at an informal dispute resolution and "won because we were doing what the regs require, which is to reduce restraint use," says Hurst.