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In many states it’s already set up - nursing homes are not supposed to know when an inspection will occur. BUT, the fact that most surverys happen every 12 months, nursing home administrators KNOW when the time is going to be. Once a year or every 15 months an inspection happens. I say, make this more often and truly unannounced. I’ve seen what happens when an inpending inspection is due: Extra staff are scheduled, the building gets painted and cleaned…it should be this way all the time.

FRANKFORT - Betty Higgins was impressed with the number of staffers rushing around inside a Western Kentucky nursing home, caring for patients, sweeping floors, cleaning rooms.

“It was like a hive of bees on steroids,” said Higgins, whose elderly mother was a resident. “They were getting ready for a state inspection.”

Higgins said she thinks nursing homes would provide that level of service every day if administrators didn’t know when state inspectors were going to show up. That’s why the Lexington woman was pleased to hear about legislation pending in the General Assembly that would punish state employees who tip nursing homes to impending inspections.

A Senate bill would require that any state employee who informs a nursing home of an impending inspection be fired. That bill passed on a 36-1 vote yesterday, and now moves on to the House.

A similar bill already pending in the House would make it a crime to inform nursing homes of impending inspections.

State Rep. Kathy Stein of Lexington, sponsor of the House version, said the legislation is important because nursing homes house some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens. Stein likened unannounced inspections to pop quizzes in a classroom. If no one at nursing homes knows when they’re coming, they will stay better prepared.

Bernie Vonderheide, spokesman for Kentuckians for Nursing Home Reform, said he prefers the House version, which would require tipsters to be charged with misdemeanors and if convicted ordered to jail for up to a year.

“When my mother was in a nursing home, I was naive and I was unaware about inspections, and I would notice all of a sudden that there was more staff on the floors,” Vonderheide said. “I would ask, ‘What’s going on?’ and they would say, ‘We’re going to be inspected by the state tomorrow.’ ”

State Sen. Tom Buford urged legislators to vote for his bill yesterday.

“It is very similar to a fire marshal calling up a theater and saying, ‘Get the chains off those exit doors because we’re about to do an inspection,’ and when it’s over they might put the chains back on,” Buford said. “Thus, in a nursing home, it could result in conditions not being satisfactory in the future, but only being satisfactory for the inspection, at that moment.”

State Rep. David Floyd, R-Bardstown, a nursing home owner, said he was unaware that notifying nursing homes in advance of inspections was a widespread problem. He said no one had ever notified him.

Of the two proposals, Floyd said he thinks Buford’s is more reasonable. He questioned whether a state worker should be sent to jail for the offense.

“It seems extreme to me,” Floyd said.