White House To Ease Off Nursing Home Plan Proposal To Cut Inspections Met With Barrage Of Criticism

Reacting to a barrage of criticism from state officials and consumer groups, the White House said Tuesday that an administration proposal to scale back inspections of many nursing homes would be thoroughly revised to guarantee the protection of patients.

“It’s probably not going anywhere any time fast,” President Clinton’s press secretary, Mike McCurry, said of the original proposal, recently sent to state nursing home inspectors around the country.

Administration officials said that the proposal had not been entirely abandoned and that after considering a wide range of comments, the government might still issue new procedures allowing inspectors to concentrate on nursing homes with the worst problems.

That was the aim of the original proposal, which would have narrowed the scope of reviews at other nursing homes, reduced the number of residents who must be interviewed and reduced the number of medical records that must be examined.

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services had contemplated final adoption of the proposal early next year. But Chris Jennings, a White House aide who coordinates health policy for the president, said they had now been told to revise it to make sure that patients were fully protected.

“They are going back to the drawing board,” Jennings said, “and will work with consumer groups, long-term-care ombudsmen and providers to make sure that any proposal improves the quality of care in nursing homes.”

The president, he added, will not tolerate “any type of regulatory changes that undermine the enforcement of nursing home quality standards.”

Congress set detailed standards for nursing homes in 1987, and the homes must meet those standards in order to obtain payment from Medicaid or Medicare. State agencies, working under contract with the federal government, inspect the homes for compliance.

State officials and consumer groups had denounced the administration’s original proposal, saying it would allow the quality of nursing home care to deteriorate.

Ellen T. Reap, director of the Delaware Office of Health Facility Licensing and Certification, said the proposal had been developed by the federal government “in very close partnership with the nursing home industry.”

Such partnership, she said, does not always protect consumers’ interests. “I don’t want meat inspectors to be in partnership with the meat industry,” she said.