Friday, January 26, 2024

Families could monitor Iowa nursing home residents under bill

Proposal comes amid abuse and neglect reports at Iowa facilities


DES MOINES — Families of nursing home residents would be allowed to monitor their rooms using cameras under a bill advanced Tuesday by Iowa lawmakers.

The bill, House File 537, is intended to give family members greater ability to monitor the safety of their relatives in nursing homes, said Rep. Joel Fry, one of the bill’s sponsors. Fry, a Republican from Osceola, said the bill has been in development for years, but concerns about privacy and confidentiality have made it difficult to get it passed by lawmakers and signed into law.

“This bill has been worked on for a lot of years, and we’re finally getting this bill to a place where everybody is coalescing around the bill,” he said.

Before monitoring by a security camera could begin, the bill requires a nursing home resident to consent unless he or she is deemed unable by a health care provider to understand the nature of the monitoring. If a resident is deemed unable to consent, the resident’s representative — an attorney or legal guardian — would be able to consent for them.

Roommates in a shared room also would need to consent if one resident agrees. If a roommate does not consent, the nursing home would have to work to accommodate the request by offering either of the residents a different room.

The bill comes as Iowa nursing homes face heightened scrutiny after multiple reports in the last year of deaths, abuse and neglect at long-term care facilities.

In December, Iowa Senate Democrats called for oversight investigations into the state’s nursing homes. Republicans, who control both chambers of the Legislature, rejected that request and said there are already mechanisms in place to detect and prevent abuse at the facilities.

According to a report from the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, Iowa ranks 49th out of the 50 states in its ratio of nursing home inspectors to facilities.

Ten Iowa nursing homes are listed as eligible for special oversight by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, and two others are listed as special focus facilities.

Fry said the increased attention on problems at Iowa’s nursing homes puts a spotlight on the proposal, but that he thinks lawmakers would be moving ahead anyway notwithstanding those reports of death, abuse and neglect.

“Certainly, some of the issues that have happened across the state make this a much more heightened issue,” he said. “I think we’d be at this spot anyway, regardless of whether we had any of those issues popping up. We've been working on this a while.”

Lobbyists representing Iowa’s nursing homes and health care providers said they were undecided on the bill and said they would like to work with lawmakers on the details as it moves forward.

Rep. Timi Brown-Powers, a Democrat from Waterloo, said she had concerns about who would be able to access the surveillance videos, how long the videos would be saved and how to protect the privacy of roommates.

“I think we need to do something. I think doing nothing is not an option at this juncture,” she said. “But I do have some questions to make sure that we are giving the best care, the most dignity to these folks and keeping people safe all at the same time.”

The proposal was passed unanimously by a subcommittee and next goes to the House Health and Human Services Committee.

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Families could monitor Iowa nursing home residents under bill

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