Chuck Grassley: “for 10 years, I have advocated for stronger measures to ensure that America's nursing home residents receive the quality…”

“for 10 years, I have advocated for stronger measures to ensure that America's nursing home residents receive the quality of care they deserve. Currently, over 1.7 million Americans live in nursing homes. This number will grow by leaps and bounds as the baby boomer generation ages. Therefore, there has never been a more critical time to make sure that the Federal Government does all it can to protect the most vulnerable among us from substandard care. In late September, an article on the front page of the New York Times underscored this issue and brought to light some troubling data. The article, entitled ``At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing,'' studied the quality of care at investor-owned nursing homes. The findings were alarming, to say the least. Using numbers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the article compared several investor-owned nursing home chains to industry-wide averages for several indicators. Here is what was found. The investor-owned homes, on average, had fewer clinical registered nurses per resident and higher numbers of serious health deficiencies. The article also reported that, in some cases, long-stay residents in these investor-owned homes suffered from higher rates of deterioration in their condition. I would like to highlight one case in particular. Following its purchase by a large investment firm, one nursing home cut its number of clinical registered nurses in half.”