The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) says it has cleared a pileup of maltreatment cases for elders, vulnerable adults and their families from 2017.

Gil Acavedo with MDH says eliminating paper-based processes and streamlining internal case reviews helped get the backlog cleared. The stepped-up effort began after numerous reports that the nearly 400 reports of abuse from elder care facilities around the state each week were outpacing investigators’ ability to respond.