New Report: ALF Promising Practices
The Long Term Care Community Coalition has released a report on promising practices for ALFs. Assisted Living: Promising Policies and Practices runs 52 pages and is divided into 13 sections, 4 of which focus on staffing. The introduction makes the case for why residents of ALFs are in need of stronger protections:
Assisted living facilities (ALFs) are increasingly viewed by seniors and their families as a desirable option for residential care, including for those in need of a nursing home level of care but who wish to avoid the institutional environment that typically defines life in a nursing home… Despite the billions of dollars in public funding every year, there are no federal rules governing the standards of care in ALFs. This lack of federal oversight not only means that care in ALFs is completely regulated by individual states, but also that, even when their needs and vulnerability are similar, ALF residents do not have a comparable right to quality care and quality of life that nursing home residents are entitled to under federal law.
In the absence of federal standards, ALF residents are only protected to the extent that individual states have developed regulatory requirements to ensure the safety and dignity of their residents. Unfortunately, according to a 2018 GAO report, Medicaid Assisted Living Services: Improved Federal Oversight of Beneficiary Health and Welfare is Needed, all too often states fail to protect ALF residents or even keep track of when they are harmed. The GAO found that there were an astonishing 23,000 reported cases of “critical incidents,” including abuse, neglect, exploitation, and death, in ALFs across just 22 states in 2014. While this number is significant, there is little doubt that the extent to which critical incidents and other problems occur is, actually, far greater, since only 22 of the 48 states surveyed by the GAO tracked and reported critical incidents. Moreover, the review only included Medicaid assisted living, which covers a small minority of ALF residents (most Americans pay privately for assisted living services). (citations omitted)
Each section includes best practices and recommendations with state specific examples. Check it out!
After you finish reading the report, check out the accompanying Assisted Living State Requirements Chart. Handy!