The Association of Health Care Journalists just updated its HospitalInspections.org website. The site now has 27,985 records of hospital inspection results, covering from January 2011 well into December 2017. Most of the records show details of each deficiency found in hospitals.
The website includes the results of government inspections of acute-care hospitals, critical-access (rural) hospitals and psychiatric hospitals resulting from complaints. It does not include reports of deficiencies found at long-term care hospitals, nor does it include the results of routine hospital inspections.
The file came from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The database is searchable by keyword, city, state and hospital name. The website is open to the public. AHCJ members can also download the latest data for their own searches and analysis. They also have access to resources and tip sheets about how to best use the data in their reporting.
AHCJ launched the site in March 2013 following years of advocacy urging the government to release the deficiency reports in electronic format. Until then, reporters and the public had to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with CMS to obtain the documents.
