A major, comprehensive report on nursing home care was released on April 6, 2022, by the Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes under the jurisdiction of the National Academies of Sciences (NASEM), Engineering, and Medicine, The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality: Honoring Our Commitment to Residents, Families, and Staff.
With support from a coalition of sponsors, NASEM formed the Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes to examine how the United States delivers, finances, regulates, and measures the quality of nursing home care. The resulting report, National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality: Honoring Our Commitment to Residents, Families, and Staff, identifies seven broad goals (below) and supporting recommendations which provide the overarching framework for a comprehensive approach to improving the quality of care in nursing homes. The new Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes examined how our nation delivers, regulates, finances and measures quality of nursing home care, including the long-standing challenges brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, STAT published this article written by three of the Committee members: Honoring Our Commitment to Residents, Families, and Staff.: U.S. nursing home care is ineffective, inefficient, inequitable, fragmented, and unsustainable
Webinar Information
Highlights and Recommendations: The Quality of Care in Nursing Homes. In this link, scroll down to Publications. You’ll see to the right, links to Highlights and Recommendations
Overarching Conclusions
- The way in which the United States finances, delivers, and regulates care in nursing home settings is ineffective, inefficient, fragmented, and unsustainable.
- Immediate action to initiate fundamental change is necessary.
- Stakeholders need to make clear a shared commitment to the care of nursing home residents.
- Ensure that quality improvement initiatives are implemented using strategies that do not exacerbate disparities in resource allocation, quality of care, or resident outcomes.
- High-quality research is needed to advance the quality of care in nursing homes.
- The nursing home sector has suffered for many decades from both under-investment in ensuring the quality of care and a lack of accountability for how resources are allocated.
- All relevant federal agencies need to be granted the authority and resources from the U.S. Congress to implement the recommendations of this report.
Goals
- Goal one: Deliver comprehensive, person-centered, equitable care that ensures the health, quality of life, and safety of nursing home residents; Promotes resident autonomy; And manages risks
- Goal two: Ensure a well-prepared, empowered, and approximately compensated workforce
- Goal three: Increase transparency and accountability of finances, operations and ownership
- Goal four: Create a more rational and robust financing system
- Goal five: Design a more effective and responsive system of quality assurance.
- Goal six: Expand and enhance quality measurement and continuous quality improvement
- Goal seven: Adopt health information technology in all nursing homes