Tougher nursing home law would add cameras

ORLANDO – Florida’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities would be required to have generators and the fuel to run them under a state law proposed Wednesday — echoing an emergency order from Gov. Rick Scott following the deaths of 14 residents at a Hollywood Hills rehabilitation center after Hurricane Irma.

But the legislation goes beyond Scott’s order — which has been protested by the industry over its tight timetable — and imposes stricter oversight on long-term care facilities, including allowing undercover investigators and monitoring cameras.

“The truth of the matter is for two decades the regulatory and legislative oversight system for nursing homes has been chipped away at, and this tragic event has exposed deeper flaws that go much further than the lack of adequate generator power for these facilities,” said state Sen. Gary Farmer, D-Lighthouse Point, the bill’s co-sponsor.

His district includes The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in Broward County. Eight residents died there Sept. 13, three days after the facility lost power from Hurricane Irma, sending room temperatures soaring. Six more residents died after being rescued.

Senate bill 896 and its companion, House bill 655, would require the state’s 683 nursing homes and more than 3,000 assisted living facilities to have