New York lawmakers reforming nursing home care
ALBANY, N.Y. – After a deadly year in New York’s nursing homes, state lawmakers have passed legislation intended to hold facility operators more accountable for neglect and potentially force them to spend more on patient care.
Rules passed in recent days as part of a state budget deal would require forprofit homes to spend at least 70% of their revenue on direct patient care, including 40% on staffers who work directly with residents.
Under the deal, set to be signed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, home operators will also face limits on their profit margins.
Any profits in excess of 5% would have to be sent to the state.
The goal is not only to protect people in nursing homes “but to dissuade bad actors from coming into this business,” Sen. Gustavo Rivera, Senate health committee chair, said. New York’s budget would also send $64 million to nursing home and acute care facilities to increase nurse staffing levels.
The nursing home industry has blasted the new revenue requirements, saying operators need flexibility for things like construction costs.
Stephen Hanse, president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association, which represents nursing homes, said the big problem in the industry isn’t owner greed, but poor reimbursement rates for care. He said it costs $266 on average to provide skilled nursing care per resident each day, but New York pays an average of $211.
The state’s new spending mandate, he said, “harms the highest quality, fully staffed 4- and 5- star nursing homes by requiring that funds be redirected from other patient care investments and building improvements and be used only for certain staff.”
More long-term care residents have died of COVID-19 in New York than any other state. Nursing homes alone have reported 13,800 deaths.
The Cuomo administration’s decision to withhold information about those deaths from the public, for months, is being investigated by federal prosecutors and is one subject of a legislative impeachment inquiry.
Cuomo and lawmakers are also facing outcry from family members devastated by the state’s high death toll and worries that residents, despite an ongoing vaccination campaign, are still at risk in some understaffed facilities.
“I had absolutely no idea this was how this nursing home industry was run until I had to deal with it,” said Cecelia Potter, 63, of Cobleskill, whose 74-yearold husband is in a central New York nursing home.
Potter said her husband, a Navy veteran, hasn’t had a shower in weeks, receives little attention from overstretched aides and has declined “dramatically” over the past year.
“We need massive nursing home reform, statewide we do, and it’s probably countrywide,” she said.