Tennessee has removed nursing home inspection and investigation reports from the state website, leaving families with less information when they are deciding where an aging parent or other loved one should receive care.
The change means the state’s online facility listings may show disciplinary actions or older fines while omitting newer reports detailing serious safety violations. NewsChannel 5 Investigates reported that the Tennessee Health Facilities Commission removed the reports and now directs people to file public records requests to obtain them.
A Fatal Case Shows What Families May Miss
The consequences are especially stark in the case of Jay Kritsch, who died in February at the Waters of Springfield nursing home after falling in his bathroom and hitting his head. State investigators found that employees had not performed CPR, despite the facility telling 911 dispatchers that CPR was underway, according to the station’s reporting.
The Waters of Springfield was fined $26,130 and temporarily barred from accepting new residents until it submitted a corrective action plan. Yet the state’s public listing showed only a $250 fine from 2020, leaving no visible record of the findings connected to Kritsch’s death or several other recent investigations.
Records compiled by ProPublica’s Nursing Home Inspect show the Springfield facility had a February 2026 complaint report involving a failure to provide basic life support, rated as an immediate-jeopardy violation. The database also lists additional reports from 2023, 2024 and 2025, bringing the home’s recorded total to 20 deficiencies and more than $35,000 in fines.
The State Cites Privacy And Staffing Problems
Logan Grant, executive director of the Health Facilities Commission, told NewsChannel 5 that the reports contain personal health information and that the agency does not have enough resources to redact every document before posting it. The commission’s position is that publishing the reports without additional review could create privacy problems, even though the underlying documents originate with federal regulators.
Ruth Talbot, who oversees ProPublica’s database, said the federal reports already remove resident names and specific medications before they are released. The result is a sharp divide between what families can find quickly through a nonprofit database and what they can find through Tennessee’s own facility search tools.
Public Records Requests Add Time And Cost
The Health Facilities Commission says people can still obtain inspection and investigative records through a public records request, and its website continues to publish annual inspection-enforcement reports and monthly disciplinary-action reports. But a request must identify the facility and records specifically, and families may have to wait weeks and pay copying or processing charges.
Olivia Kritsch told NewsChannel 5 that she waited more than a month for records concerning her father’s case and was charged $45. For families comparing several facilities, advocates say that process is hardly a substitute for a searchable, free record that can be reviewed before a placement decision is made.
Other Tennessee Homes Show The Information Gap
The missing reports are not limited to one facility. ProPublica’s profile for Cedar Creek Post Acute in Mount Juliet lists 33 deficiencies and a $211,244 fine, while the state’s listing previously showed a much smaller disciplinary footprint, according to the investigation.
That gap matters because inspection reports can reveal patterns involving falls, infection control, abuse reporting, staffing and basic care that a simple “no disciplinary actions” label may not capture. Deborah Fisher of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government called the state’s move “the opposite of transparency,” while families and advocates argue that reports should be readily available when the public is weighing a nursing home’s record.
