You guessed it: gutted Obama-era regulations and an industry crony who has Trump’s ear
By Sarah Okeson
Former Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson, a
Democrat but the CEO of a nursing home industry group, wrote Trump after the
2016 election seeking a “collaborative
approach” to regulation, much like the one the Federal Aviation
Administration has had with the aircraft industry.
Team Trump acquiesced, rolling back
fines and proposing to weaken rules for
infection prevention employees. That collaborative approach has failed, much as
it did with the FAA , the agency that enabled failures in
the design of the Boeing 737 Max.
Shoddy federal oversight of planes helped kill 346 people. The
death toll from the pandemic, where health officials Seema Verma and Alex Azar helped
turn our nation’s nursing homes into Trump death traps, is more than 46,000.
“Nursing homes are incubators of
epidemics,” said Betsy McCaughey, the
chair of the Committee to Reduce
Infection Deaths.
So far, more than 7,000 residents or people connected to nursing homes have died. That number includes 12 residents at the Milford Center in Delaware owned by Genesis HealthCare which has an executive, Michael Wylie, who previously chaired the American Health Care Association board.
Parkinson was paid about $3.3 million in 2017 by the association which represents more than 14,000 nursing homes. The association had 45 lobbyists in 2019, including Brian Ballard, the former chairman of Trump’s fundraising committee.
Especially
Vulnerable
Nursing home residents are especially
vulnerable to infections spread among groups such as the flu
and norovirus. In a normal year, almost 388,000 of our
nation’s elderly and disabled die of infections they got in
nursing homes.
Under Obama, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
created a new position for nursing homes to try to help prevent infections from
spreading. The employees, infection
preventionists, are supposed to make sure nursing home staff
properly clean their hands, disinfect surfaces and other measures to prevent
illnesses in residents and staff.
The requirement was part of a 2016 rule that was the first major
update to requirements for long-term care providers since 1991. The
rule also included protections against abuse, neglect
and exploitation of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.
In 2016, a fifth of skilled nursing facilities were cited
for actual harm or
jeopardy to residents. Only 6.5% had no deficiencies in
2016.
Fines Drop
Under Trump, fines for nursing homes that injured or endangered
residents dropped to an
average of $28,405 compared with $41,260 during the last year
of Obama’s administration. In 2017, CMS put an 18-month
moratorium on fines and other penalties for some of the tougher
regulations, saying it would use the time to “educate surveyors and the
providers.”
Now, Verma and Azar want to weaken the
infection preventionist position, changing the position from at least part-time
to spending “sufficient time” at the facility. Nursing home inspectors started
focusing exclusively on infection control after the pandemic started.
Knock ‘Em Out
More than 1,500
people or organizations commented on the proposed changes, many
of them from the nursing home industry. The cutbacks, which also include weakening a resident’s
right to file a grievance and allowing nursing homes to medicate
residents with antipsychotic drugs indefinitely, are expected
to save nursing home operators more than $600
million a year.
Some of the nursing home executives who asked federal regulators
to weaken the standards for infection preventionists have had COVID-19
outbreaks in their facilities.
Deb Fournier, the chief operations officer for Maine Veterans’ Homes, said in
September that she supported the proposed Trump changes in employees charged
with preventing infections.
“This will allow LTC facilities to use workforce resources in a manner that best meets the needs of their organizations,” she wrote.
Two people have
died at the veterans’ home in Scarborough, Maine, and 38 people
have gotten sick.