Fact Sheets

Using the Workforce and Quality Incentive Program, under which a skilled nursing facility provides services to a Medi-Cal managed care enrollee, AB 488 would require that the program includes staff training and general facility improvements aimed at addressing the needs of skilled nursing facility residents with vision loss.

Nursing home evictions are typically haphazard, inappropriate, and dangerous. When residents’ lucrative Medicare coverage ends, often days or weeks after their admission, facilities have enormous financial incentives to evict them in favor of new residents with fresh Medicare coverage. Evictions are closely tied to profitability which is why residents are often sent home with inadequate care or to motels or homeless shelters.

Family councils are organized groups of family members and friends of long term care facility residents who meet regularly to share information and discuss concerns about quality of care in the facility. Family councils are critically important to supporting family members and residents and to maintaining high quality of care in long term care facilities.

Despite dangerous side effects, condemnation by care providers, and a decade-long national and state campaign to reduce the inappropriate use of psychotropic drugs in nursing homes, the U.S. Office of Inspector General recently found that 80% of long-stay nursing home residents are now receiving psychotropic drugs. The rate of psychotropic drug use in nursing homes alarmingly increased during the pandemic, as more facilities turned to sedating drugs to control and manage residents.