FRIDAY, July 30, 2021 (HealthDay News) – The Biden administration has reversed Trump policy limiting the amount of fines U.S. nursing homes could be penalized for violating safety standards.
The Trump policy passed in 2017 and prevented the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from fining a nursing home for every day it did not meet federal standards.
This has reduced many penalties to a single fine and brought the grand total from hundreds of thousands of dollars to a maximum of $ 22,000, the New York Times reported.
Many nursing homes cited for violations such as poor infection control, lack of protection for residents from avoidable accidents, neglect, abuse, and pressure ulcers are repeat offenders, according to Toby Edelman, a senior attorney at the Medicare Advocacy Center.
Higher fines are deterrent and more likely to indicate strict enforcement of the rules, Edelman told the Times.
In early July, the Biden government changed the guidelines on the CMS website, saying it had “determined that at this point the agency should retain the discretion to impose one penalty per day if necessary to remedy certain circumstances of prior non-compliance” .
The new policy means regulators can impose penalties either per day or per instance, the Times reported.
Nursing home deaths account for nearly a third of the total COVID-19 death toll in the United States.
Although the number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes has declined sharply since vaccines became available, inadequate staffing, lack of protective equipment, and poor infection control are still issues, according to lawyers and some officials, the Times reported.
Federal data shows that 81% of nursing home residents are vaccinated but only 58% of workers are vaccinated, increasing the risk of outbreaks even among fully vaccinated residents.
The daily fines “are draining valuable resources from an already underfunded industry, especially at an unprecedented time when nursing homes need all the support they need to protect their residents,” according to the industry’s main trading group, the American Health Care Association and the National Assisted Living Center the Times said in a statement.
More information
Visit the Health Research and Quality Agency to learn more about nursing home safety.
SOURCE: The New York Times
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