Subscribe!
World issues pushed nursing home reform to the side in State of the Union. But it’s there – Herb Weiss
By Herb Weiss, contributing writer on aging
More than a week ago, President Joe Biden, with Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sitting behind him in the House Chamber in the United States Capitol, delivered his first State of the Union Address. Harris and Pelosi made history marking the first time two women have been on the dais during a presidential address before the joint session and the American people
According to C-SPAN, Biden’s speech was the fourth-longest of the seven most recent presidents’ speeches, beating out Presidents George H.W. Bush, George H. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Amid frequent applause breaks, chanting from both sides of the aisle and heckling, Biden’s prepared remarks delivered Tuesday, March 1, 2022, totaled around 7,762 words, lasting over one hour and two minutes.
Biden spoke mostly on-script with his prepared remarks on a wide range of topics before lawmakers, Supreme Court Justices, guests, many waving small blue and yellow Ukraine flags or wearing the country’s colors to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine. While the first half touched on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the need for a global coalition to respond, the second half addressed inflation, COVID-19 and the “new normal,” increasing domestic manufacturing, health care, prescription drugs, energy and taxes, voting rights legislation, and the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.
Biden concluded his speech by proposing a “Unity agenda” calling for a fight against the opioid epidemic, pushing Congress to pass a mental health package, supporting Veterans returning from the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan and finding a cure for cancer.
The State of the Union and nursing homes
While Biden’s speech briefly touched on the quality of care in the nation’s nursing homes, his Administration is clearly making this a major domestic issue. During the address, Biden expressed strong concerns about Wall Street firms that were taking over many nations’ nursing homes. “Quality in those homes has gone down and costs have gone up. That ends on my watch,” he told the packed chamber. “Medicare is going to set higher standards for nursing homes and make sure your loved ones get the care they deserve and expect and [they’ll be] looked at closely,” he said.
A day before the State of the Union address, the White house released a detailed document, entitled, “Fact Sheet: Protecting Seniors and People with Disabilities by Improving Safety and Quality of Care in the Nation’s Nursing Homes,” outlining dozens of proposed changes on how U.S. nursing homes are regulated and operate, including a vow to adopt federal minimum staffing requirements for facilities, step up enforcement of regulations and to eliminate overcrowded patient rooms.
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that continues to wreak havoc on the nation’s nursing homes, where 200,000 residents and workers have died from COVID-19, nearly a quarter of all COVID-19 deaths in the United States, the Biden Administration says that staffing shortages are getting worse, reducing the quality of care provided to residents
Poorly performing facilities will be held accountable for improper and unsafe care and must immediately improve their services or will be cut off from tax payor dollars. Biden calls for better information to be provided to the public to assist them in better understanding the conditions they will find in each facility and to assist them in choosing the best care options available.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will begin to explore ways to reduce resident room crowding in nursing homes by phasing out rooms with three or more residents and promoting private, single occupancy rooms. Multi-occupancy rooms increase the risk of the spread of infectious diseases, including COVID-19. The agency will also establish a minimum nursing home staffing requirement, the adequacy of staffing is closely linked to quality of care provided.
Meanwhile, CMS also plans to strengthen the Medicare Skilled Nursing Facility Value-Based Purchasing Program and base payment on staffing adequacy (including over weekends) and retention and the resident experience. Although the nation has seen a dramatic decrease in the use of antipsychotic drugs in nursing homes in recent years, CMS will continue its efforts to identify problematic diagnoses and bring down “inappropriate use” of such drugs.
Enhancing accountability and oversight
The Biden Administration calls for the enhancing and accountability and oversight of the nation’s nursing homes by adequately funding inspection activities, beefing up scrutiny on more of the poorest facility performers, expanding financial penalties and other enforcement sanctions, and increasing the accountability for chain owners whose facilities provide substandard care. CMS will work with nursing homes to improve care by providing technical assistance.
To enhance transparency, CMS will create a new database that will track and identify owners and operators across states to highlight previous problems with promoting resident health and safety. The agency will also collect and publicly report data on corporate nursing home ownership and will enhance the Nursing Home Care website. Finally, CMS will examine the role that private equity investors play in the nursing home sector.
Biden’s nursing home reforms will ensure that every nursing home has a sufficient number of adequately trained staff to provide care to the 1.4 million residents residing in over 15,500 Medicare and Medicaid facilities across the nation. Nursing home staff turnover can be reduced by creating pathways to good-paying jobs along with ensuring staff to join a union. CMS calls for lowering financial barriers to Nurse Assistant Training, adequate compensation and access to a realistic career ladder. The agency launches a National Nursing Career Pathways Campaign with partners including the Department of Labor.
Finally, Biden puts together his strategy to ensure emergency preparedness in nursing homes during the ongoing pandemic. He calls for continued COVID-19 testing in nursing homes and continued COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters to be provided to residents and staff. CMS will strengthen requirements for on-site infection prevention, and make changes to its emergency preparedness requirements, Finally, the agency will take what it has learned during the pandemic and integrate new lessons on standards of care into nursing home requirements around fire safety, infection control, and other areas, using an equity lens.
In a released statement after Biden’s State of the Union address, AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins stated: “We were also encouraged to hear the President describe new actions to ensure that residents in nursing homes will receive the safe, high-quality care they deserve. For years, AARP and AARP Foundation have sounded the alarm about problems in America’s nursing homes. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the chronic, ongoing issues with our long-term care system and emphasized the need for reform. It is a national disgrace that more than 200,000 residents and staff in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities died. AARP urges the federal government to act swiftly to ensure minimum staffing standards, increase transparency, and hold nursing homes accountable when they do not provide quality care.”
On the other hand, the nursing home industry had its views as to Biden’s call for nursing home reforms. “The nursing home profession has always been committed to improving the quality of care our residents receive, and we appreciate the Biden Administration joining us in this ongoing effort. Over the last decade and prior to the pandemic, the sector made dramatic improvements. Fewer people were returning to the hospital, staff were providing more one-on-one care than ever before, and the unnecessary use of antipsychotic medications significantly declined,” said Mark Parkinson president and CEO of AHCA, in a released statement.
“Those who continue to criticize the nursing home sector are the same people who refuse to prioritize our residents and staff for resources that will help save and improve lives,” noted Parkinson, whose Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization represents more than 14,000 nursing homes and long-term care facilities across the nation. “Additional oversight without corresponding assistance will not improve resident care. To make real improvements, we need policymakers to prioritize investing in this chronically underfunded health care sector and support providers’ improvement on the metrics that matter for residents,” he said.
“It’s time to stop blaming nursing homes for a once-in-a-century pandemic that uniquely targeted our residents and vilifying the heroic caregivers who did everything they could to protect the residents they have come to know as family,” said Parkinson. ““Long term care was already dealing with a workforce shortage prior to COVID, and the pandemic exacerbated the crisis. We would love to hire more nurses and nurse aides to support the increasing needs of our residents. However, we cannot meet additional staffing requirements when we can’t find people to fill the open positions nor when we don’t have the resources to compete against other employers,” he said.
To read the White House Fact Sheet to improving the quality of care in the nation’s nursing homes, go to:
On Monday, March 7th at 9am, AARP Rhode Island and US Senators Reed and Whitehouse will speak on the need for lower prescription drug prices in a virtual press conference.
AARP Rhode Island State Director Catherine Taylor, Volunteer State President Marcus Mitchell and Volunteer Lead Federal Liaison Dr. Phil Zarlengo will join Rhode Island US Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse for a virtual news conference highlighting the need for Congress to lower prescription drug prices. AARP Rhode Island will present the Senators with a petition signed by more than16,000 Rhode Islanders calling for Congress to act now and stop unfair drug prices.
You can listen in via ZOOM at:
https://aarp-org.zoom.us/j/98668832992?pwd=bktuTjJBMUZhUDRaVDkvN2dCSXZqUT09
Passcode: 618357
Participants will respond to on-topic media questions posted in chat.
More information about AARP’s Fair Drug Prices campaign can be found at aarp.org/rx.
_____
Herb Weiss, LRI’12, is a Pawtucket writer covering aging, health care and medical issues. To purchase Taking Charge: Collected Stories on Aging Boldly, a collection of 79 of his weekly commentaries, go to herbweiss.com.