VA nursing homes fall behind their private competitors when it comes to neglect and medical mismanagement issues, according to a recent USA Today article.
Analyzing internal VA documents to reach those results, the article suggested that residents in more than two-thirds of Department of Veterans Affairs nursing homes were likelier to suffer from serious bedsores and other pain.
Further, the analysis of a 2017 survey indicated that a significant number of veterans in VA nursing homes suffer potential neglect or mismanagement of medication.
The results showed that more than 100 VA nursing homes showed poorer results than private nursing homes on most key quality indicators, including rates of infection and decline in daily living skills. Overall the VA scored worse on average than homes in the private sector using nine of 11 key indicators.
The documents obtained by both USA Today and the Boston Globe were not initially published by the VA. After the data was made public, legislation was introduced in Congress requiring the VA to release all nursing home quality information on an annual basis as part of an effort to improve quality of care.
The VA operates 133 nursing facilities nationally serving 46,000 veterans.