Nursing home care, funding system need overhaul, report says

A major report says American nursing home residents are subjected to ineffective care and poor staffing, and that facility finances are shrouded in secrecy and regulatory lapses go unenforced

NEW YORK -- Nursing home residents are subjected to ineffective care and poor staffing, while facility finances are shrouded in secrecy and regulatory lapses go unenforced, according to a report Wednesday that called for wholesale changes in an industry whose failures have been spotlighted by the pandemic.

To anyone who saw the scourge of COVID-19 on the country’s most vulnerable, the findings of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine might seem sobering but unsurprising, as the long-term care system's inadequacies were made plain by more than 150,000 resident deaths. The authors of the 605-page report insist it could be an impetus to address issues that have gotten little more than lip service for decades.

“The public is so concerned about the quality of care that most people really fear their family having to be in a nursing home,” said Betty Ferrell, a nurse who chaired the report committee. “We’re very optimistic that our government officials will respond to what has really been a travesty.”

The report covers a vast cross-section of long-term care, from granular details such as the way facilities are designed to foundational issues that would require massive political capital and investment to address. Among them: the authors advocate for creating a new national long-term care system that would exist outside of Medicaid, the program that is at the center of most long-term care financing.