Nursing home operators in New York are facing a new wave of public scrutiny after an AARP report noted that 96% of New York City nursing homes and adult care facilities received no visits from the state’s Long Term Care Ombudsman Program in the first quarter of 2022.
Consumer advocates including AARP are lobbying for $15 million to be added to the state’s 2023-2024 budget to hire 235 more ombudsmen so more inspections can be undertaken.
The AARP report, which was released Thursday, calls for one full-time employee for every five nursing facilities so they can “conduct regular and consistent weekly visits.”
The ombudsman program in New York covers 15 regions. According to the New York State Office of Aging, which runs the ombudsman program, six of the regions other than New York City had non-visitation rates between 53% and 78% of a region’s facilities.
The number of volunteer ombudsmen is not enough, the AARP report stressed. In addition, many are older and thus more vulnerable to COVID and other infectious diseases, report authors wrote.
“Volunteers are restricted in the scope as well as the number of facilities they can visit,” the report noted. “The program needs more professional staff to conduct weekly visits so all facilities can have a regular ombudsman presence.”
If consumer advocates get their way, providers would be dealing with an annual state ombudsman program with a $19.4 million budget, more than four times as large as the current $4.4 million budget.
