Editorial: Strengthen nursing home rules

Friday, Sept. 14, 2001 | 8:59 a.m.

The Bush administration obviously was embarrassed by revelations in the New York Times last week that it was planning to reduce nursing home inspections and ease penalties for infractions. The Times story cited confidential government documents and the Associated Press later confirmed "the essence of the plan" in an interview with spokesman Bill Pierce of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Hours after the Times article was published, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the proposals had been rejected. We hope that is the case, because nursing home regulations must be strengthened, not weakened. It is unthinkable that the administration would put into action some of the proposals exposed by the Times.

One proposal, for instance, would have reduced inspections of nursing homes that enjoyed good track records. The problem there is that nursing homes frequently change owners or administrators. Even Sen. Charles Grassley, senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, was quoted as saying, "Today's good nursing home might be tomorrow's poor-performing facility."

The Times also reported that the administration wanted to give the 17,000 nursing homes regulated by the government the ability to continue receiving Medicaid and Medicare payments if uncorrected violations of federal health and safety standards did not harm patients. That would have been a reversal of current regulations that stop payments to nursing homes if they remain out of compliance six months following an inspection.

An alarming national study released last month shows why we need to strengthen regulations to make nursing homes safer for residents. The study uncovered nearly 9,000 abuse violations from January 1999 to January 2001. There were 1,601 nursing homes during that period cited for putting residents in great risk of harm.

The picture is not so rosy in Nevada, where complaints of abuse of nursing home residents rose from 418 to 606 over the past three fiscal years. Granted, the state has improved its reporting system, which contributed to the increase in complaints. But this is not the appropriate time to reduce nursing home inspections and penalties.