KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas advocate for residents in long-term care facilities applauded the Biden Administration’s new reforms to improve the quality of nursing home care across the country.
The White House on Monday unveiled 21 new steps to make nursing homes safer, hold nursing home owners more accountable for the care they provide and make the ownership of nursing homes more transparent to the public.
“What this is a great day for residents of long-term care,” Mitzi McFatrich, executive director of Kansas Advocates for Better Care told the KSHB 41 I-Team. “It’s very exciting to see that attention is being paid to this really important and vulnerable population of people that need care every single day.”
The new reforms also call for the information on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) “Nursing Home Compare” website to be verified instead of self-reported by the facilities. Consumers can use that website to find everything from inspection reports to staffing levels in nursing homes nationwide.
But a recent KSHB I-Team investigation revealed CMS does not verify the COVID-19 vaccination rates for residents and staff in nursing homes now posted on its website. We learned that information is self-reported by the nursing homes and a spokesman called the data “generally accurate.”
McFatrich told the I-Team she’s pleased the Biden Administration is making the accuracy of information on CMS’s website a priority.
Such action, she said, is long overdue.
“People rely on the consumer information that is available to them on the Nursing Home Compare (website),” she said. “For many years we have worked with CMS trying to make sure that the data that’s on Nursing Home Care is not self-reported, is audited and is reliable.
She added that it is critical for the data to be audited and verifiable, saying it makes a difference when it comes to needing to rely on the information to make a well-informed decision.
Another key reform in Biden’s plan, McFatrich said, is the establishment of minimum staffing requirements for nursing homes.
“The one thing that people who live in care facilities repeat to us over and over again is that there’s never enough staff, the staff is not well enough trained no matter how kind, compassionate and good-hearted they are, and often times there simply is just not enough staff to provide the care that’s needed,” McFatrich said.
But having adequate and trained staff is closely linked to the quality-of-care that residents receive, she said.
“We know that older adult outcomes are much better when registered nurses are in the facility and providing care to them,” McFatrich said. “Having a registered nurse in the facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week, will improve care for older adults in terms of the health care issues they have, but also in terms of providing competent, skilled oversight to the nurse aides who are doing much of the hands on care for older adults.”
Another new measure McFatrich lauded calls for Congress to provide CMS with almost $500 million in new funding for health and safety inspections of nursing homes. McFatrich and the White House said nursing home inspections in recent years remained flat while complaints about unsafe facilities increased.
“There’s been an effort to erode the oversight function of the state and federal government when it comes to assuring health and safety standards are being met by facilities that are receiving taxpayers’ dollars to provide that care,” McFatrich said. “I was very encouraged to see that the Biden Administration is focusing on the need for consistent and strong oversight of providers of nursing facility care.
According to the White House, more than 1.4 million people live in some 15,500 Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing homes nationwide. In the past two years, more than 200,000 residents and staff in nursing homes died from COVID-19. That number represents almost 25% of all the COVID-related deaths in the country.
Each year, tens of billions of federal dollars pour into nursing homes and “too many continue to provide poor, sub-standard care that leads to avoidable resident harm,” the White House said in a written statement about its new reforms.
Other measures the White House announced to make nursing homes safer for residents include:
- Increased scrutiny of the worst nursing homes: CMS’s Special Focus Facility (SFF) program identifies the poorest-performing nursing homes in the country. The SFF program will be overhauled to more quickly improve care for residents. Facilities that fail to improve will face increasingly larger enforcement actions, including termination from participation in Medicare and Medicaid;
- Improve Transparency of Facility Ownership and Finances: CMS will publicly report corporate ownership and operating data. It will also make this information easier to find on the Nursing Home Care Compare website.
Launch National Nursing Career Pathways Campaign: CMS, in collaboration with the Department of Labor, will work on a nationwide campaign to recruit, train, retain, and transition workers into long-term care careers.
More information about the Biden Administration’s new nursing home reform measures is available here.
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