KFF Health News senior correspondent Jordan Rau reports that the Association of Health Care Journalists has made updates to its Hospital Inspections website. This website now offers an easily searchable database containing government inspection reports of hospital violations from January 2011 to the present. Hospitalinspections.org now includes results of inspections at acute-care hospitals, critical-access hospitals, and psychiatric hospitals resulting from complaints. Users can search by keyword, hospital, city, state, and specific time periods.
The database now holds over 24,000 inspection reports with a total of 109,162 individual deficiencies listed. Each record typically includes the inspector’s narrative detailing each deficiency. However, long-term care hospitals are not included in this database, nor do routine hospital inspection results appear. The information on the site is updated using a file from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
AHCJ first launched this site in March 2013 after advocating for years for the government to release deficiency reports digitally. Prior to this, reporters and the public had to submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to CMS or state agencies to access these documents. A demonstration of the inspection tool and how to read inspection reports will take place on Friday, June 7 at Health Journalism 2024 in New York City. The panel will also discuss other sources of hospital quality data.