“Federal Nursing Home Commission Calls on CMS to Adopt 27 Recommendations, ‘Reduce Suffering’,” by Alex Spanko, Skilled Nursing News
Quote:
“The solutions target a list of seven overarching problems or improvement areas that the group identified in its analysis:
- Ongoing supply and affordability dilemmas related to testing, screening, and personal protective equipment (PPE)
- Tension between rigorous infection control measures and quality of life issues that exist in cohorting and visitation policies
- A call for transparent and accessible communications with residents, their representatives and loved ones, and the public
- Urgent need to train, support, protect, and respect direct-care providers
- Outdated infrastructure of many nursing-home facilities
- Opportunities to create and organize guidance to owners and administrators that is more actionable and to obtain data from nursing homes that is more meaningful for action and research
- Insufficient funding for quality nursing home operations, workforce performance, and resident safety.”
LTC Comment (from Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform):
Everything turns on the last of these problems—funding. As long as LTC depends on politicians to appropriate funds for welfare and social insurance programs regulated by bureaucrats, little will change for the better. Private financing in freer markets is the only solution and it will happen, most likely by default.
