A major regulation to overhaul nursing homes isn’t up to snuff for House Democrats.
A group of 32 Democratic lawmakers wrote to the Obama administration calling for major changes to proposed requirements for nursing homes. Lawmakers said the proposed rules must be changed to boost staffing and more direct care.
The letter calls on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to boost staffing levels. CMS should require a nursing home to be staffed with at least one nurse around the clock.
Nursing homes also should have a minimum standard of at least 4.1 hours of direct care nursing time per resident per day. The lawmakers point to a government study that showed harm to residents is unavoidable below that level.
But the lawmakers didn’t call for changes just based on patient care.
They also want to eliminate arbitration agreements, in which an employer or resident takes a dispute to an arbiter from an independent company rather than a courtroom.
Lawmakers worry that proposed language around pre-dispute arbitration agreements in the regulations will “legitimize and institutionalize a process which is heavily biased against nursing facility residents.”
While the proposed language includes protections, the lawmakers said it wasn’t enough.
“Arbitration companies are chosen by nursing facilities, creating a financial incentive for them to side with facilities since they, not residents or their families, are likely to be repeat customers,” the letter said.
The letter called for pre-dispute agreements for binding arbitration be explicitly prohibited.
Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., led the letter.
