By A scathing March 29, 2022 report by Michael Tilden, Acting California State Auditor, charged that the California Department of Public Health “essentially enabled hospice agency operators who are possibly fraudulent to continue functioning, putting patients at serious risk of not receiving appropriate care.” The long-awaited report opens with a letter to the governor and legislative leaders that states: “Indicators strongly suggest that a network or networks of individual perpetrators in Los Angeles County are engaging in a large and organized effort to defraud the Medicare and Medi-Cal hospice programs.
California Nursing Home Industry Seeks to Cash-In on Pandemic Tragedies
Raising the wages of nursing home caregivers is smart. Trusting nursing homes with even more hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is dumb. On March 2, 2022, the California Association of Health Facilities (CAHF) – a trade group representing nursing home operators – announced a legislative proposal for California to fund a living wage for certified nursing assistants (CNAs).
2021 California Legislation
CANHR has supported, opposed, and/or closely followed the below pieces of legislation this session. Please check www.canhrlegislation.com for updated details on legislation, and www.leginfo.ca.gov for information on specific bills. CANHR Sponsored Bills AB 279 (Muratsuchi): Prohibiting Resident Eviction During the Pandemic Many residents of California skilled nursing facilities (“SNFs”) and Intermediate Care Facilities (“ICFs”) face a terrible prospect in the ongoing COVID pandemic: involuntary transfer to new facilities, sight unseen, far from their families and support networks.
OPPOSE AB-499 CONTINUED
AB 499 seeks to amend California law governing referral agencies for assisted living facilities (known in California as Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly or RCFEs) to provide accountability, but instead creates unnecessary communication and compliance barriers. Specifically, while the bill allows referral agencies to provide information to seniors about its services and fees verbally, it requires seniors to submit a written request if they want to receive such information in writing.
Support AB-1663: Assembly Committee on Judiciary
The Britney Spears conservatorship case exposed deep flaws within California’s probate conservatorship system – demonstrating how easily people can become trapped in a conservatorship and how difficult it is to escape. People with disabilities and older adults are often caught in the pipeline to conservatorship, a system that strips them of basic civil rights and their ability to advocate for themselves.