(Des Moines, Iowa) – Iowa’s Auditor of State Rob Sand, today (Monday), released a report showing that the State of Iowa is failing to meet the federal mandate on inspections of nursing homes certified to accept Medicare or Medicaid and that Iowa is inspecting certified nursing homes at a slower rate compared to neighboring states. Additionally, Iowa ranks 46th nationally in the amount of licensed nursing staff per resident. Iowa has the 17th highest turnover rate among nursing staff. Nearly 11 out of 20 nurses who worked at a certified nursing home in the previous year are no longer employed at the facility.

The Auditor’s Office calculations find that the State of Iowa conducts inspections, on average, every 17.1 months. This is more than 4 months more than the federal mandate requiring certified nursing homes to be inspected, on average, every 12.9 months. CMS also instructs states to inspect individual nursing homes at least once every 15.9 months; 85.4% of Iowa’s 403 certified nursing homes did not meet this expectation on at least one occasion in the past 3 inspections.

In preparing this report, the Auditor’s Office used publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Specifically, the Auditor’s Office calculated the duration between completed standard inspections across all certified nursing homes to determine the frequency. This report also takes into consideration the national pause on inspections at nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic to reach its findings. Durations that occurred during the COVID-19 stoppage are shortened by 147 days – the length of time between official federal guidance to stop and restart onsite standard inspections.