The editorial in the Aug. 29 Journal Gazette about nursing home administrators contained misstatements and oversimplifications.

The editorial regrettably drew its information from an earlier article in the Indianapolis Star that itself contained several inaccuracies.

It is false to assert the Indiana Attorney General’s Office has done nothing on 40 facility-inspection surveys of nursing homes.

My office carefully investigates each inspection report by Indiana State Department of Health surveyors.

At least 24 surveys currently are under active investigation; they absolutely have not been dropped. My staff and attorneys diligently investigate survey claims, but they cannot share this confidential information with reporters. To suggest there is a lack of scrutiny is wrong.

The editorial writer misunderstands how the licensing complaint process works by writing: “In forwarding a complaint to the state board, the attorney general simply calls for a review. It becomes the state board’s responsibility to follow through and determine if action is warranted.”

It is incorrect to suggest that “forwarding” a Health Department survey to the Indiana Health Facility Administrator (HFA) Board could amount to a licensing complaint that the board would consider or act upon; a complaint requires much more investigation and documentation than that.

An HFA Board member already receives summaries of cases my office investigates.

But under the narrow licensing rules the HFA Board itself adopted, it is inherently difficult to make a licensing complaint stick against a nursing home administrator.

It would be fruitless and counterproductive for my office to lodge a licensing complaint where our investigation is not yet finished or the facts don’t support a violation, only to have the HFA Board dismiss it, as sometimes happened in years past.

That would only embolden bad administrators to continue harmful practices.

The editorial failed to point out that 35 of the 92 complaints filed by former Attorney General Karen Freeman-Wilson during her final days in office in 2000 were later dismissed by the HFA Board.

By contrast, my predecessor as attorney general, Steve Carter, filed 44 additional licensing complaints during his first 3 1/2 years in office (2001 to mid-2004) and successfully persuaded the board to take disciplinary action on 43 of them.

He also prevailed in 15 complaints of the stack of 92 left behind by Freeman-Wilson where Carter had to redo the investigations.

The editorial also ignored the fact that my office files many complaints about nursing home violations – but they are filed against the health workers whom the state’s own licensing rules consider responsible.

Since 2009, we filed nearly 150 licensing complaints against RNs and LPNs for nursing-home violations with the Indiana State Board of Nursing.

Any mistreatment of a nursing home resident is unacceptable.

But The Journal Gazette’s editorial took the Star’s misleading assertions about three nursing home incidents at face value.

In the first incident, the State Department of Health’s own inspection survey and a thorough investigation did not substantiate a claim of rape.

In the second, involving a power outage caused by a lightning strike, the situation was resolved to the HFA Board’s satisfaction.

The third incident remains under investigation by my office.

I believe there is much room for improvement in protecting elderly Hoosiers in long-term care, and I would support changes in state law that legislators might make to strengthen the legal authority of the Indiana attorney general’s office to tighten regulation of licensed professionals working in nursing homes.