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In February 2003, an early morning fire at the Greenwood Health Center, a nursing home in Hartford, CT, claimed the lives of sixteen residents. A similar fire in Nashville, TN later that year killed fifteen residents. In both cases, these facilities lacked an automatic fire sprinkler system.
According to the GAO and industry experts, the single biggest obstacle preventing most nursing homes from installing sprinklers is the cost. Already burdened by the increasing cost to care for their residents and shortfalls in the Medicare funding they rely on, they simply cannot afford these systems. In addition, while CMS has it within their authority to increase fire safety standards and mandate the installation of sprinklers, it has repeatedly shied away from doing so because of the cost that would be passed on to nursing homes.
On December 8,
2005, I joined Representative Peter King (R-NY) in introducing the Nursing Home Fire Safety Act
(HR 4491). The bill
addresses the primary obstacle – the cost - to installing sprinklers
by directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish
both a loan program and need-based grant program to aid nursing homes in
tackling the high cost of installing sprinklers.
The loan program
would assist nursing homes that cannot afford the up-front cost of
retrofitting their facilities, but could afford to pay back a low
interest government backed loan. The
grant program would target those nursing homes in the greatest need of
financial assistance in installing sprinkler systems by requiring the
Secretary of Health and Human Services to give priority to homes that
lack the resources to install these systems on their own.
In addition, the
bill expresses the sense of Congress that every nursing home in
Legislative Information
Letters of Support
GAO Report on Nursing Home Fire Safety (GAO-04-660) |
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