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Senior Citizen Politics
Senate Aging Committee Hears Testimony on Nursing
Home Problems
Chairman Kohl to introduce legislation to create streamlined system of job applicant background checks
 May 3, 2007 - Many nursing homes shown to be
providing substandard care are still not being subjected to tough
sanctions to motivate lasting improvements for and safety of residents,
according to testimony presented yesterday by Kathryn Allen, Director of
Health Care, Government Accountability Office. She was among several
witnesses at a hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging chaired
by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI).
According to the GAO, in 2006 nearly one in
five nursing homes nationwide was cited for poor care or, more
specifically, care that can cause actual harm to residents.
The hearing was on the state of the nursing home
industry twenty years after the landmark Nursing Home Reform Act (best
known as OBRA 87).
Without question, the Nursing Home Reform Act
improved nursing home care in this country," said Kohl. "Today, many of
the nations 16,000 nursing homes are providing adequate or excellent
care. But shamefully, quite a few nursing homes are getting away with
providing a lot less, putting a good number of the seniors living in
long-term care facilities at risk."
He called this "unacceptable" and said " it raises
questions about how and why our enforcement system is failing.
Chairman Kohl added, This committee has a long
history of closely scrutinizing the quality of nursing home care, and we
intend to reaffirm that commitment.
The GAO report also found that those deficient
facilities that do make the effort to attain compliance often slip back
into poor performance, and that of the poorly performing nursing homes
studied by the government in 1999, nearly half of those had made no
progress in their standard of care by 2006.
In his opening statement, Chairman Kohl said he
would be sending a written request to the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS) for a bimonthly briefing on any progress made in
regard to todays GAO recommendations. Chairman Kohl also expressed
interest in improving the availability of public information on the
quality of individual nursing homes, so that consumers can easily access
information concerning any deficiencies found or sanctions levied
against a nursing home in order to make an educated decision about which
facility can best serve the long-term care needs of a family member.
To Introduce Legislation
Additionally, Sen. Kohl announced his intention to
introduce legislation that would create a streamlined, cost-effective
system of background checks nationwide for those who apply for jobs in
long-term care facilities, much like the pilot program that is being
conducted by the state of Michigan.
After establishing a comprehensive system that
combined several state registries with the state criminal background
check and an FBI check, Michigan prevented more than 600 people with
criminal and/or abusive histories from working in the long-term care
industry in the past year alone.
Joining the GAO's Allen on the first panel was
James Randolph Farris, M.D., who testified on behalf of the Centers for
Medicare & MedicaId. Farris is the Regional Administrator of the Dallas
office at CMS, and serves as the point of contact between national and
regional surveyors.
The second panel included Charlene Harrington, a
professor of Sociology and Nursing at the University of California.
Harrington was a member of the Institute of Medicine panel that released
a seminal report on the nursing home industry in 1986, the
recommendations of which helped spur Congress to enact the Nursing Home
Reform Act the following year.
The panel also included Alice Hedt of the National
Citizens Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, a prominent advocacy
organization that has successfully pushed for reforms within the
industry; Mary Ousley, former chair of the American Health Care
Association, which represents for-profit and some non-profit nursing
homes; and Orlene Christie, Director of the Legislative and Statutory
Compliance Office in Michigans Department of Community Health.
Editor's Note: For more detailed information,
including links to testimony and a video cast of the hearing, see below.
Hearing Title
The Nursing Home Reform Act Turns Twenty: What
Has Been Accomplished, and What Challenges Remain
May 2, 2007
>>
Click here to view recorded Webcast (Real Video)
Statements of Committee Members
Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Chairman
Background
Click here to view Nursing Home Reform Act (OBRA '87): 20 Years of
History Timeline
Witness Testimony
Note: Click on presenters' names
for links to their testimony (pdf).
Kathryn Allen, Director of Health Care, US Government Accountability
Office, Washington, DC
James Randolph Farris, M.D., Regional Administrator, Dallas Office,
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dallas, Texas
Charlene Harrington, Professor of Sociology and Nursing, University
of California, San Francisco, California
Alice Hedt, Executive Director, National Citizen's Coalition for
Nursing Home Reform, Washington, DC
Mary Ousley, President, Ousley & Associates, and former Chair of the
American Health Care Association, Richmond, Kentucky
Orlene Christie, Director, Legislative and Statutory Compliance
Office, Michigan Department of Community Health, Lansing, Michigan
>>The committee webpage:
www.aging.senate.gov
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