AARP Commends Lawmakers For Working To Safeguard Nursing Home Residents, USA
Main Category: Seniors / AgingArticle Date: 18 May 2008 - 7:00 PDT
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AARP issued a statement following today's House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on nursing home safeguards. The statement, from AARP Legislative Policy Director David Certner, follows:
"We thank the subcommittee for its work to protect the 1.5 million older Americans who rely on nursing homes for their care. Hearings like the one held today are an important part of ensuring that quality and safety are the top priorities for nursing homes, regardless of their ownership. Families should never have to worry about the safety of their loved ones who receive care in a nursing home.
"We hope today's hearing will spur members of the subcommittee to consider ways to improve the quality, accountability and transparency of the country's nursing homes. AARP has suggested several steps to begin this process, including more thorough and updated documentation of facility ownership and better data on nursing home staffing and public reporting of this information.
"AARP has also endorsed the bipartisan Nursing Home Transparency and Improvement Act (S. 2641) introduced by Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Herb Kohl (D-WI). This bill would improve the transparency and accountability of nursing homes and is one of the most significant nursing home reform initiatives since the 1980s. We look forward to working with members from both chambers to enact such legislation, which would help improve America's nursing homes for all who rely on them."
AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization that helps people 50+ have independence, choice and control in ways that are beneficial and affordable to them and society as a whole. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to either political campaigns or candidates. We produce AARP The Magazine, the definitive voice for 50+ Americans and the world's largest-circulation magazine with over 33 million readers; AARP Bulletin, the go-to news source for AARP's 39 million members and Americans 50+; AARP Segunda Juventud, the only bilingual U.S. publication dedicated exclusively to the 50+ Hispanic community; and our website, AARP.org. AARP Foundation is an affiliated charity that provides security, protection, and empowerment to older persons in need with support from thousands of volunteers, donors, and sponsors. We have staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
http://www.aarp.org
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There's A Crisis With Nursing Homes
posted by Gregory D. Pawelski on 3 Jun 2008 at 6:36 pmCongress is turning up the heat on nursing homes, or so it seems. The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations held a hearing that focused on problems with regulation and full disclosure of ownership.
Surprisingly, this subcommittee had not held an oversight hearing about nursing home care since 1977. This indicates a rather lackadaisical attitude on the part of Congress in regards to our senior population. The last significant change in nursing home regulations was the Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987.
Now it seems Congress maybe serious enough in examining whether standards continue to provide an appropriate level of care and protection for residents of nursing homes.
The subcommittee released a report commissioned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) that suggested that the regulatory enforcement system for nursing homes has a lot of problems.
All 46 Manor Care nursing homes in Pennsylvania staff below a standard recommended in a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) study as putting residents at risk.
CMS contracts out the oversight of each nursing home to each state's health department. Not only is the each state's health department the problem, CMS may be part of the problem too!
CMS uses stealth moves like putting out the word that surveyors shouldn't cite anything they don't absolutely have to, cutting or under-funding oversight budgets, and looking at self-reported and unaudited data (data reported by the facilities themselves and no oversight agency verifies audits to ensure that it is even true).
Nursing home inspections depend on the paperwork to verify the residents are getting good care. Manor Care pays nurses to make sure the paperwork is perfect, thereby ensuring a good inspection.
In the past few years, a wave of new owners and investors has begun purchasing nursing home chains. These private-equity firms are unregulated and new to the nursing home market.
Many worry that the top priority for these new owners will be profits, rather than providing the staffing and resources necessary to ensure top quality care for our loved ones.
Frequently, they use complex corporate structures, separating the nursing home real estate from the operating companies and putting multiple layers of limited liability partnerships between themselves and the day-to-day operations of the nursing home.
The Carlyle Group already planned to restructure its take-over of Manor Care, which will comprise about 300 corporate entities that could obscure ownership and make it more difficult to regulate care. It split the company's real estate holdings from the rest of the business so the properties could be used as collateral to raise funds in credit markets.
Ownership structures with multiple stakeholders have been used by other private-equity firms to minimize liabilities and shield them from regulator inquiries like when cutting staff is made to improve profit margins. They use these kinds of structures to avoid taking responsibility when taking control of nursing homes.
Private equity is buying up this industry and then hiding the assets, and when residents are dying from lack of proper care, there is little the courts or regulators can do, while they skim off the profits to line the pockets of investors or plow the money into separate ventures that have nothing to do with nursing home care.
CMS and the states lack the tools to keep up with the rapid changes in the industry, to know who actually owns the country's nursing homes and who should be held accountable for the residents in their care. There is a crisis in our nation's nursing homes. The residents there need help!
How Much Do We Spend On Nursing Homes?
posted by Gregory D. Pawelski on 13 Jun 2008 at 7:21 pmThe nursing home sector accounts for roughly 6 percent, or $124.9 billion of the more than $2 trillion that we invest annually in healthcare. As always, the question is “Are we getting good value for our money?”
Given how vulnerable nursing home patients are, questions about quality deserve special attention. Maggie Mahar does the basics, how much do we spend on nursing homes?
http://www.healthbeatblog.org/2008/06/health-care-spe.html
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