Two US senators on Tuesday introduced a bill to improve the long-term care ombudsman program to strengthen resident advocacy. The move comes as a growing number of senior living and nursing home residents have complex cases.
The Strengthening Advocacy for Long-Term Care Residents Act was introduced by Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA), chairman of the US Senate Special Committee on Aging, and Tim Kaine (D-VA), both members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
The ombudsman program was established under the Older Americans Act and promotes advocacy for residents of senior living communities, nursing homes and other long-term care settings by providing families and residents with confidential information and assistance to improve quality of life and civil rights issues. Casey and Kaine said that with the growing number of older adults moving into long-term care facilities, ombudsman staff and volunteers face challenges.
Casey said that passage of the act would ensure that the ombudsman program has the resources, leadership and staff to continue its “critical work” of safeguarding residents.
Specifically, the act would reappoint a national director to the program, which was lost during a 2019 reorganization; require the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Community Living to create categories of duties for volunteers and provide appropriate training; and call for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to provide recommendations on ombudsman staffing levels.
In 2023, almost 5,400 ombudsman program staff and volunteers conducted more than 340,000 visits to long-term care facilities, helping more than 500,000 residents and their families, according to figures from the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program.
A US Government Accountability Office report from May on the federal ombudsman program detailed the increasingly complex needs of long-term care residents that create challenges on ombudsman programs facing staffing and funding limitations.
The GAO reported that ombudsmen increasingly are serving residents with complex needs related to mental health, substance misuse and cognitive impairment. A “booming” assisted living industry also is placing a burden on state long-term care ombudsman programs, which are stretching their resources to cover those extra units without additional staffing or assistance, according to the report.
State long-term care ombudsman programs served more than 3 million residents across 76,000 residential care communities in fiscal year 2022, including 60,325 assisted living communities serving 1.6 million residents, the GAO said.
Earlier this year, Casey released a report — Uninspected and Neglected — highlighting the “critical role” of ombudsman staff members in safeguarding nursing home residents. He also is leading the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act.
