Missouri managed to drop its backlog of overdue nursing home inspections and complaints down from 25% to 3% in one year, the Missouri Independent reported Aug. 5.
About this time in 2023, a quarter of the state's nursing homes hadn't been inspected in at least two years. The state hired certified part-time staff to help with the backlog and increased the year's budget to increase nurse surveyor salaries and contracted with private agencies to bring in additional staff. The efforts brought the number of pending inspections down to 3% in under a year.
The number of complaints pending investigation also dropped from more than 4,000 as of January 2021 to 265 today, the report said.