April 23, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact: Lauren Shaham, AAHSA, 202-508-1219

Statement from Larry Minnix, President & CEO, American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) on the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) Report on Nursing Home Oversight

Washington, D.C. — The GAO's latest report on nursing home oversight comes to a conclusion that we can all support: there should be two types of nursing homes: the excellent and the non-existent.

Quality should be an automatic public expectation. We want to see substandard owners and managers displaced, not nursing home residents and employees. Ideally, a well-performing nursing home would acquire or manage a poorly performing provider. This decision would allow residents to avoid the complicated, and sometimes traumatic, transfer process and keep staff on the job.

Within the current enforcement system, however, providers who take over these facilities are required to assume the previous operator's deficiencies. This policy discourages good providers who have the skills and expertise to turn around these poor-quality homes.

As our field works internally through Quality First and with the federal government and others through the Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes campaign to focus on true indicators of nursing home quality, "early warning systems" and interventions should be developed to prevent nursing home residents from receiving deteriorating care.

The best proxy for quality that we have is staffing. Yet, the Medicare cost reports do not require facilities to report their staffing data. AAHSA, therefore, urges the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to revise the cost reports system and gather the staffing information needed to help them identify poor performers before further problems occur.

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About AAHSA
The members of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (www.aahsa.org) help millions of individuals and their families every day through mission-driven, not-for-profit organizations dedicated to providing the services that people need, when they need them, in the place they call home. Our 5,800 member organizations, many of which have served their communities for generations, offer the continuum of aging services: adult day services, home health, community services, senior housing, assisted living residences, continuing care retirement communities and nursing homes. AAHSA’s commitment is to create the future of aging services through quality people can trust.