November 19, 2012 by Pamela Tabar, Associate Editor

ProPublica has released an updated version of its Nursing Home Inspect tool, offering a much wider view of nursing home violations, including more deficiency details and a longer look-back period. The software simplifies searches through the database information collected from the regulatory surveys of the nation’s nursing homes.   The latest version includes 262,500 deficiencies, ranked on a scale of A to L, with L being the most severe infractions, according to a ProPublica news release. The most common infractions shown in the database are in the categories of D, E and F, what are classifed as “no actual harm with potential for more than minimal harm that is not immediate jeopardy.”   The top 10 states for the most serious deficiency ratings (K and L combined, in order of incident frequency) are Texas, New York, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Florida and Indiana.

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