As a Florida Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer, I advocate on behalf of the victims and families of those who suffer serious harm as a consequence of nursing home corporations’ failure to follow important safety rules that date back to 1987.
The Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987
Will the new POTUS make good on his promise to eliminate a substantial number of regulations for the sake of eliminating regulations? Shouldn’t regulations that seek to protect some of our country’s most vulnerable citizens, many of whom are veterans of foreign wars, be strengthened and not done away with? One such set of regulations, the federal Nursing Home Reform Act, was signed into law in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan. Late last year, following an exhaustive study and input from nurses, physicians and others in the healthcare community, this 30 year old set of laws that mandates that certain requirements be met in order to provide for the safety, health and well-being of nursing home residents was updated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Obama administration.
These safety rules seek to protect the elderly from the development of bed sores, malnutrition, dehydration, infection and sexual abuse, among other things. Many of these problems are caused by the failure of a nursing home corporation to hire, train and supervise sufficient numbers of qualified staff members to meet each resident’s needs. Without these regulations, conditions in America’s nursing homes will only likely get worse.