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Nursing Home Reform

At the request of Congress, the Institutes of Medicine conducted a study of nursing home quality in 1986. They found an alarming number of cases of abuse, neglect, and deficiencies in nursing home care throughout the nation. In response they proposed a number of nursing home reform measures to Congress. In 1987 the federal government enacted the Nursing Home Reform Act under the larger Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA). This nursing home reform was passed because of the crucial need to protect nursing home and long term care residents from neglect, abuse, and exploitation at the hands of their caretakers.

Several federal investigations have produced alarming evidence of widespread nursing home abuse throughout the nation that has continued since the nursing home reform efforts of the late 1980s. The government estimated, even after the passage of nursing home reform, that almost nine thousand cases of nursing home abuse were reported in 1999 and 2001 alone. In this same study, investigators found that thirty percent of all the nursing homes in the nation have committed nursing home reform violations.

Nursing home residents can suffer from a number of abuses at the hands of their caretakers. Bedsores and infections, dehydration and malnutrition, falls and broken bones, medical and prescription errors, inappropriate restraint, financial exploitation, and physical, mental and psychological neglect and abuse are just some of the crimes that can be committed against residents in nursing homes and long term care.

Nursing home reform laws were enacted on the state and federal level in order to protect residents from abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Nursing home reform also provides additional regulatory bodies and corrective action options to investigate and punish perpetrators of these crimes. The federal nursing home reform includes a number of minimum standards that must be met by nursing home care professionals.

The basic objective of nursing home reform is to ensure that facilities have sufficient and qualified nursing staff that consistently provides services to attain and maintain the highest practicable physical, mental, and psychological well being of all residents. Resident’s quality of life is to be assessed and improved through resident assessments and individual plans of care on a routine basis. Nursing home reform requires that staff prevent the deterioration of a resident’s daily living skills, provide adequate nutrition and fluid intake, administer medical treatment free of error, refrain from inappropriate physical and chemical restraint, provide adequate supervision to prevent accidents, and generally act in a way that promotes and enhances every resident’s quality of life.

Nursing home reform laws also provide methods of action and relief to investigate nursing home reform violations. State and federal ombudsmen programs were created to provide routine facility and resident assessments (at least once every 15 months) and to order corrective action wherever necessary. If you are interested in learning more about nursing home reform, you may wish to speak to an attorney who has expert knowledge of patient’s rights and options under nursing home reform.

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Nursing Home Abuse