AAHSA' Task Force Report on the Survey System
The American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) developed a Task Force on Survey, Certification and Enforcement. In June 2008, they issued a report titled Broken and Beyond Repair: Recommendations to Reform The Survey and Certification System.
The AAHSA Task Force on Survey, Certification and Enforcement believes strongly that
despite some measurable, specific successes, the nursing home oversight system has,
overall, failed to fulfill its 20-year-old goals to ensure a nursing facility’s “sustained
compliance” with regulations and to enhance quality of care and quality of life for
residents living in those facilities. The Task Force’s year-long examination has convinced
each of its members not only that the system is not working today – but also that the
system will not work in the future, when a growing number of older Americans with
increasingly complex care needs will seek care in nursing homes. Now is the time – not
tomorrow or next year or five years from now – to take bold steps to design a new system
for ensuring quality of care and quality of life in this country’s nursing homes.
The National Commission for Quality Long-Term Care, a bipartisan study group,
suggested in its December 2007, report that the long-term care system can no longer
depend on “the old ways of doing things.”19 In this report, the Task Force on Survey,
Certification and Enforcement urges AAHSA to take the lead in advocating for steps that
will introduce “new ways of doing things” into the survey and certification system. We
urge the association to consider our recommendations carefully and to act on them
boldly.
