Illinois Legislation Mandates Hefty Fines for Understaffed Nursing Homes
Responding to the findings of a joint investigation by Kaiser Health News and the Chicago Tribune, Illinois legislators recently passed legislation that mandates hefty fines for understaffed nursing homes. According to the September 2018 report, for every year examined, nearly 6,000 Illinois nursing home residents who were hospitalized had sepsis—a serious and deadly bloodstream infection. Further analysis of that data indicated that 1 in 5 of the infected residents died.
The new legislation requires nursing homes to be fined if they fail to meet the state’s minimum staffing requirements already in place. State regulators will also be calculating whether a nursing home is meeting the required care standard by analyzing quarterly reviews of a facility’s submitted Medicaid payroll data and its patient data.
These new rules must be prepared by January 2020 with fines issued beginning in 2021. The rules also require facilities receiving state staffing violations to make public those violations on their websites, in their main lobbies, at their registration desks, and at all public entrances.
Additionally, the new law contains constraints on administering psychotropic medications without obtaining consent of the resident or their responsible party. This provision in the legislation is related to the concerns that in some understaffed facilities, these psychotropic medications may be used to replace proper care of residents.
Nurses and advocates are continuing to seek legislation that will limit the maximum number of patients/residents a nurse provides care for to between one and four depending upon the type of facility.
Compliance Perspective
Failure to adequately evaluate the collective care needs of the residents in a facility and to provide adequate nursing staff levels to meet those care needs may be considered provision of substandard quality care in violation of state and federal regulations.
Discussion Points:
- Review policies and procedures for evaluating the collective care needs of the facility’s residents and the process for translating those care needs into appropriate staffing levels.
- Train staff on providing proper care of residents to prevent sepsis, and the need for frequent turning and repositioning along with other precautions for immobile residents.
- Periodically audit to determine the adequacy in numbers of nursing staff by reviewing staffing rosters for all shifts and the process for evaluating and translating residents’ collective care needs into adequate staffing.
RECRUITING NEW STAFF: PAVING THE ROAD TO RECRUITING COMPETENT STAFF
