Pursuing Quality Long-Term Care

Election season is an exciting time that offers a renewed opportunity to shape public policy. For many long-term care residents, voting is a patriotic duty that has been respected and exercised over the course of their lifetime. Residents of long-term care have the same right to vote as everyone else. Join us for a conversation with Gwen Orlowski, Executive Director of Disability Rights New Jersey to discuss how residents and their families can ensure their voices are heard in the upcoming elections.

Guardianship is a tool intended to support individuals who have lost the capacity to make decisions for themselves. However, guardianship is an extreme step and can have a devastating impact on a person's well-being. In this episode, we will discuss guardianship over residents of long-term care facilities, less restrictive alternatives, and strategies for supporting residents under guardianship.

Guests: Alison Hirschel, Director of the Michigan Elder Justice Initiative, and Emily Miller, Managing Attorney of the Crime Victims Legal Assistance Project of the Michigan Advocacy Program

Retaliation, and the fear of retaliation, can prevent residents and family members from raising their concerns about care and safety. It also has a chilling effect on the reporting of abuse or neglect in long-term care facilities, leaving many living in fear and without relief from harm. Retaliation can range from very subtle to obvious actions and it may be difficult to determine whether staff are retaliating or if a resident’s needs are not being met for another reason, such as understaffing. Retaliation is never acceptable; it is a violation of the resident's rights. In this episode, join us for a conversation with an Ombudsman, a long-term care resident, and a gerontologist as we discuss how to identify retaliation, action steps to take when it does occur, and how to advocate to prevent retaliation from happening in the future.

Guests: Tasha Erskine-Jackson, Regional Ombudsman, Connecticut Aging and Disability Services; Jeanette Martinez, Connecticut Long-Term Care Resident; and Eilon Caspi, Gerontologist and Dementia Behavior Specialist

In April 2024, a new federal rule requiring minimum staffing levels in nursing homes was released. This rule is an important step toward improving quality conditions in nursing homes and ensuring that residents receive the care they need. Listen in on a discussion between Consumer Voice's Lori Smetanka and Sam Brooks, who talk about the importance of the rule, what it says, and how we can start thinking about using it in advocating for quality care.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service’s (CMS) new minimum staffing standard requires facilities to provide 3.48 hours of care per resident per day. That translates into three hours and 29 minutes of care over 24 hours for each resident. This number is lower than what Consumer Voice and other consumer advocates, nursing professionals, and nursing home residents have been advocating for, for years. This number is lower than what studies have shown, for decades, will keep nursing home residents safe, but it will still raise staffing levels at many facilities.

In this episode, you will hear an important conversation between four nursing home residents about their personal experiences with understaffing, their thoughts on the new minimum staffing standard released by CMS, and their plans for advocating for themselves and others moving forward. The residents in this conversation are all part of Consumer Voice’s Consumer Advisory Council and we are grateful they made the time to share their thoughts with us.

Special Guests:

• Maurice Miller; Long-Term Care Resident in Maryland

• Sharon Wallace, Long-Term Care Resident in New York

• Cindy Napolitan Long-Term Care Resident in Texas

• Margarite Grootjes, Long-Term Care Resident in Ohio

Every April, organizations across the country take the time to celebrate and thank their volunteers. Volunteers are the backbone of many Long-term Care Ombudsman Programs (LTCOP). With the help of volunteers, the Ombudsman program can have a regular presence in facilities and stay in touch with residents. Volunteers lend their time, talent, and voice to make a difference in their communities and the LTCOP could not be its best without the volunteers who help carry out the mission of advocating for long-term care residents.

In this episode, the National Ombudsman Resource Center (NORC) talks to a certified volunteer from New Jersey about her experience and dedicated advocacy. The Administration for Community Living (ACL) also joins to honor the over 4,000 people who serve as Long-Term Care Ombudsman volunteers. These specially trained volunteers visit nursing homes and residential care communities to advocate with and for the residents living there. By visiting on a regular basis, volunteers get to know residents and gain their trust to better assist them in resolving issues or complaints to help ensure they receive quality long-term care.

Guests: Beverley Laubert, National Ombudsman Program Coordinator, Office of Long-Term Care Ombudsman Programs, Administration for Community Living; Pat Murphy, Certified Volunteer Advocate, New Jersey Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program

Since the pandemic began, there has been significant efforts by advocates to create better laws and regulations to protect nursing home residents. The pandemic and its devastating impact on nursing home residents has resulted in many states passing new laws or creating new regulations regarding a variety of areas, including staffing, transparency, and the nursing home workforce.

On this episode, you will hear from two advocates that have been successful in getting new laws and regulations passed and promulgated. Tony Chicotel, Senior Staff Attorney at California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform and Pam Walz, Supervising Attorney at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, will discuss recent legislative and regulatory victories and how they helped ensure they were implemented.

Often the conversation about addressing the chronic poor care that exists in far too many of today's nursing homes is framed around new laws or regulations. Yet, there are steps that can be taken now - using existing federal and state legal authority - to improve care and conditions in our country's nursing homes. In our conversation, we will discuss four levers of opportunity for increasing quality and accountability in nursing homes with the author of "Using What We Have: How Existing Legal Authorities Can Help Fix America's Nursing Home Crisis."

Special Guest: Nina Kohn, J.D., the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Elder Law at Yale Law School, the David M. Levy Professor of Law at Syracuse University College of Law, and a leading authority in elder law and the civil rights of older persons.

Family caregivers have always played an integral role in promoting and achieving quality care for their loved ones living in a long-term care facility. The importance of the informal care and support provided by family members for a resident's physical, mental, and emotional well-being became abundantly clear during the pandemic when those essential supports were taken away during the pandemic. Yet, advocacy and engagement by family members benefits not only their own loved ones, but ultimately all residents in a long-term care facility. In our conversation with Marcella Goheen, a family member and advocate, we discuss how families can individually and collectively, through family councils, be a strong voice for quality and for change in nursing homes.

M.T. Connolly is a writer, lawyer, researcher, policy-shaper, and leading national expert on elder justice. In her new book, The Measure of Our Age: Navigating Care, Safety, Money, and Meaning Later in Life, M.T. discusses the challenges of aging, how things go wrong, and presents powerful tools we can use to forge better long lives for ourselves, our families, and our communities. In this episode, join our discussion with MT Connolly as we talk about the challenges of aging well, ageism, and advocacy for a better long-term care system.