February 01, 2012
/24-7PressRelease/ -- A bill designed to improve the quality of nursing home care in Ohio was recently approved by the general assembly and signed by the governor. News reports indicate, however, that the improvements may not help residents of nursing homes, as they are "too easy to meet."
The requirements will affect the amount of Medicaid reimbursement the homes receive. The bill sets up 23 accountability measures that the facilities are required to meet.
An article on Cincinnati.com quotes Ken Huff, a VP and CFO of a non-profit organization that operates nursing homes as saying, "They've set the bar so low that everybody's going to get" the money. It's unclear if it will do much to prevent
nursing home accidents or improve resident conditions.
Accountability Measures
The accountability measures include such items as:
- "The facility offers at least fifty percent of its residents at least one of the following dining choices for at least one meal each day." This is followed by five variations on how meals can be served, restaurant style, buffet style, family style, a two-hour window when residents can eat or a 24-hour period.
- At least 50 percent of the residents take a shower every day.
- That the facility records the residents' care goals, including the residents' advance care planning preferences, in their medical records.
- "Not more than the applicable percentage of the facility's long-stay residents were physically restrained as reported during the minimum data set assessment process."
- The facility has accessible resident bathrooms, with mirrors at the resident height.
One issue is that a nursing home or long-term care facility could meet all of these "accountability" criteria, but because some are so trivial, that fact would prove of little use to the potential resident when attempting to assess the quality of the facility.
The State
Office of Health Transformation, created by Gov. Kasich to curb Medicare costs and improve quality, responded by say they wanted standards that 100 percent of the nursing home in Ohio could meet. Eric Poklar, a spokesman for the agency claimed that this would be used to create a "continual quality improvement program" within the state.
The question going forward will be whether the agency can both cut costs and improve quality in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
Article provided by Novak, Robenalt & Pavlik, L.L.P
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