Elder Law

New Legislation Targets Nursing Home Bonuses

By Levin & Perconti

The United States Congress is considering nursing home legislation that would eliminate taxpayer-funded bonuses to nursing homes. This would be an amendment to a nursing home budget bill. The amendment was accepted to unanimous consent of the Senate, but is still waiting to be approved. Nursing homes throughout the country are earning hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bonuses despite violations of basic health and safety standards. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which approves and helps fund each of the bonus programs, does not track the payments. Okalahoma senator Tom Coburn believes that taxpayers shouldn?t be billed for bonuses paid to inferior care facilities. "We paid out in excess of $300 million in bonuses to nursing homes that had significant problems in terms of giving the care and meeting Medicare standards," he said. "Why? Why wouldn't we fix that?" To read more about the national nursing home legislation, please click the link.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on April 05, 2009 (boomark / email).