In addition to providing a significant amount of insight into the
quality of nursing homes around the country, the Affordable Care Act
('Obamacare') also gives seniors a significant amount of protection from
nursing home abuse.
Requirements for Nursing Facilities
The ACA created a requirement for every nursing facility to create a 'compliance and ethics' program that will be effective in preventing misbehavior of the criminal, civil, or administrative varieties within the facility. This includes creating a position for one or more individuals who have the express job of ensuring that the program is followed throughout the organization, and to whom all residents have the right to submit their complaints.
Furthermore, the program must offer substantial protection to any residents who do complain, to ensure that no one is retaliated against for the act of submitting a complaint.
Constant Improvement
Beyond merely allowing residents to report problems, the ACA also obligates every nursing home to set up an individual or department to be in charge of 'Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement.'
The Department of Health and Human Services keeps track of 'best practices' for nursing facilities on a nationwide level, promoting those systems that have been proven to be most effective at keeping patients healthy and happy. The QA/PI programs that each home are required to keep in place are given access to the full dataset of best practices, and work to ensure that their facility works toward implementing as many as make sense for that facility.
Criminal Screening
The ACA provides funding for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to work with each state to create programs nationwide for the easy criminal screening of health-care workers, and it specifically provides money for nursing facilities and other long-term care facilities to perform that screening.
In addition, any nursing or long-term care facility that receives federal funding is obligated to report any crime against any resident to the Department of Health and Human Services, or they will lose those funds.
Nurse Training
Obamacare also provides those same nursing facilities with additional funds to prevent crime in the first place -- specifically, by paying facilities to train their nurses in Resident Abuse Prevention, as well as dementia care (because patients with dementia are the most common victims of nursing crime.)
Full Disclosure
Finally, the Affordable Care Act requires that every nursing facilities make public their owner, their funding sources, and their financial relationships. This prevents a particularly nasty scenario wherein nursing home owners who are caught abusing their patients simply move to a new state and start over.
The ACA has done an incredible amount for seniors who are entering nursing homes, most of which is far enough in the background that you'd never notice -- except that the number of nursing home horror stories is dropping every year.
Requirements for Nursing Facilities
The ACA created a requirement for every nursing facility to create a 'compliance and ethics' program that will be effective in preventing misbehavior of the criminal, civil, or administrative varieties within the facility. This includes creating a position for one or more individuals who have the express job of ensuring that the program is followed throughout the organization, and to whom all residents have the right to submit their complaints.
Furthermore, the program must offer substantial protection to any residents who do complain, to ensure that no one is retaliated against for the act of submitting a complaint.
Constant Improvement
Beyond merely allowing residents to report problems, the ACA also obligates every nursing home to set up an individual or department to be in charge of 'Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement.'
The Department of Health and Human Services keeps track of 'best practices' for nursing facilities on a nationwide level, promoting those systems that have been proven to be most effective at keeping patients healthy and happy. The QA/PI programs that each home are required to keep in place are given access to the full dataset of best practices, and work to ensure that their facility works toward implementing as many as make sense for that facility.
Criminal Screening
The ACA provides funding for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to work with each state to create programs nationwide for the easy criminal screening of health-care workers, and it specifically provides money for nursing facilities and other long-term care facilities to perform that screening.
In addition, any nursing or long-term care facility that receives federal funding is obligated to report any crime against any resident to the Department of Health and Human Services, or they will lose those funds.
Nurse Training
Obamacare also provides those same nursing facilities with additional funds to prevent crime in the first place -- specifically, by paying facilities to train their nurses in Resident Abuse Prevention, as well as dementia care (because patients with dementia are the most common victims of nursing crime.)
Full Disclosure
Finally, the Affordable Care Act requires that every nursing facilities make public their owner, their funding sources, and their financial relationships. This prevents a particularly nasty scenario wherein nursing home owners who are caught abusing their patients simply move to a new state and start over.
The ACA has done an incredible amount for seniors who are entering nursing homes, most of which is far enough in the background that you'd never notice -- except that the number of nursing home horror stories is dropping every year.
Peter Mangiola, RN MSN has been in the health and wellness
industry for over three decades. Peter has been a regular speaker for
many groups and organizations over the years covering a wide range of
topics. He has also been a consultant, speaker, and educator in areas
such as Dementia, Alzheimer's, cognitive/behavioral issues, disabled
children & adults and obesity counseling. Learn more at http://www.petermangiola.com
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