National Academies Advisory Committee Issues Recommendations on Nursing Home Quality

On April 6, 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes released its long-awaited report on nursing home quality. Entitled The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality: Honoring Our Commitment to Residents, Families, and Staff, the report seeks to achieve a vision of nursing home care in which residents "receive care in a safe environment that honors their values and preferences, addresses goals of care, promotes equity, and assesses benefits and risks of care and treatments." The report sets forth a series of recommendations intended to promote seven key goals:

1. Deliver comprehensive, person-centered, equitable care that ensures residents’ health, quality of life, and safety; promotes autonomy; and manages risks;
2. Ensure a well-prepared, empowered, and appropriately compensated workforce;
3. Increase transparency and accountability of finances, operations, and ownership;
4. Create a more rational and robust financing system;
5. Design a more effective and responsive system of quality assurance;
6. Expand and enhance quality measurement and continuous quality improvement; and
7. Adopt health information technology in all nursing homes.

In a webinar accompanying the release of the report, the authors stressed that the goals and recommendations are interrelated and should be viewed as an integrated whole. The recommendations of the Committee are likely to inform policy initiatives at the federal and state levels. If implemented, they would have a significant impact on the financing, oversight, and quality of nursing home care. Although the Committee stressed that immediate action is needed, most of the recommendations in the report will require a long-term approach.

A summary of the report is available from our colleagues at LeadingAge National here. Highlights of the report are here, and recommendations are here. The webinar slides are here.

LeadingAge NY will be working with our colleagues at LeadingAge National to engage with stakeholders and promote sensible reforms that improve care and quality of life for residents.

Contact: Karen Lipson, klipson@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8383