Elder Law

US Senators Reintroduce Bill to Raise Standard of Care in Nursing Homes

By Levin & Perconti

Senators Chuck Grassley and Herb Kohl reintroduced the Nursing Home Transparency and Improvement Act, a bill that would give consumers more information about individual nursing homes and their track record of care, giving the government better tools for enforcing high quality standards. Grassley was quoted as saying that "Improving the quality of care in nursing homes is a constant challenge. More transparency, better enforcement and improved staff training are needed, and this legislation works to make changes in those areas and improve the quality of life of nursing home residents and to empower the family members and loved ones of those residents." Among other things the bill improves staff training to include dementia management and abuse prevention training as part of pre-employment training. It also strengthens accountability requirements for individual facilities and nursing homes chains by requiring them to develop compliance and ethics plans to guard against civil, criminal and administrative violations. To read more about the new nursing home legislation, please click the link.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on March 23, 2009 (boomark / email).