Kaine & Casey Introduce Bill to Strengthen Advocacy for Long-Term Care Residents

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Bob Casey (D-PA), members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, introduced the Strengthening Advocacy for Long-Term Care Residents Act to improve the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program, which was established under the Older Americans Act. Local Ombudsman programs designate staff and trained volunteers as representatives to advocate for residents of nursing homes and other long-term care (LTC) facilities, providing residents and their families with confidential information and assistance and monitoring conditions and care within a facility. With a growing number of older adults residing in long-term care facilities, Ombudsman program staff and volunteers face challenges to ensuring residents receive the care they deserve and have their rights protected.

“Older Americans deserve to age with dignity, but sadly, we continue to see reports of abuses at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities,” said Kaine. “I’m introducing this legislation to strengthen the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program and help ensure that older Virginians and people with disabilities living in long-term care facilities continue to have trained professionals able to advocate for them, address their complaints, and help ensure they have access to safe, quality care.”

“Long-term care ombudsmen are vital to ensuring that residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have advocates who can represent their interests and can push for better care and conditions,” said Casey. “Senator Kaine and I are introducing this bill to strengthen the Ombudsman Program and ensure that it has the resources, leadership, and personnel to continue its critical work safeguarding the Nation’s residents of long-term care facilities.”

In 2023, nearly 5,400 Ombudsman program staff and volunteers conducted over 340,000 visits to long-term care facilities, assisting over 500,000 residents and their families. Virginia hosts 19 local Ombudsman programs located in Area Agencies on Aging that serve the more than 27,350 LTC residents across the state.

The Strengthening Advocacy for Long-Term Care Residents Act would improve the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program by:

• Instructing the Administration for Community Living (ACL) to establish categories of duties for volunteers and appropriate training requirements for volunteers based on those categories. Training guidelines should reflect the diversity of volunteer contributions to the Ombudsman program. This will make it easier to recruit and retain more Ombudsman program volunteers and continue to ensure volunteers have the appropriate training they need.
• Reaffirming Congress’ intent that the Ombudsman program should be led by a full-time National Director. In 2019, a reorganization at the ACL resulted in the loss of this position. State and local ombudsmen have reported that the lack of a National Director impedes coordination and distracts from the mission of the program.
• Requiring the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) to study and issue a report with a recommendation for the number of ombudsmen per LTC facility bed. This would give states and the ACL better insight into the current needs of the program. In 1995, the Institute of Medicine (now part of NASEM) released a report recommending a staffing ratio of one ombudsman per 2,000 beds for the Ombudsman program. This staffing ratio has not been updated in the nearly 30 years.

The bill is endorsed by the DC Ombudsman Program, National Association of State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Programs (NASOP), Pennsylvania State Long-Term Care Ombudsman, USAging, Virginia Association of Area Agencies on Aging, and Virginia Office of State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program.

Full text of the bill is available here.

###