The Patient Safety and Abuse Prevention Act
Senator Kohl has introduced the Patient Safety and Abuse Prevention Act to prevent those with criminal histories from working within long-term care settings by creating a comprehensive nationwide system of background checks. The legislation would expand a highly successful three-year pilot program, spearheaded by Kohl and authorized under the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, which prevented more than 7,000 applicants with a history of substantiated abuse or a violent criminal record from working with and preying upon frail elders and individuals with disabilities in long-term care settings.
The bill calls for states to establish coordinated systems that include checks against abuse and neglect registries and a state police check. It also adds a federal component to the background check process by screening applicants against the FBI’s national database of criminal history records. Thousands of individuals with a history of substantiated abuse or a criminal record are hired every year to work closely with exposed and defenseless seniors within our nation’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. Because the current system of state-based background checks is haphazard, inconsistent, and full of gaping holes, predators can evade detection throughout the hiring process, securing jobs that allow them to assault, abuse, and steal from defenseless elders.
The Senate Aging Committee first held a hearing on this legislation in 1998. A subsequent hearing in 2002 focused on the problem of nursing home abuse, highlighting Senator Kohl's bill as part of a possible solution. The measure was included in the Medicare prescription drug legislation that passed the Senate in June 2003. The final Medicare Modernization Act that became law included a pilot program in seven states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, Alaska and Idaho. In July 2008, the Committee released a report on the overwhelming success of the pilot program. The states who participated in the pilot have all chosen to continue their programs at their own expense, and are taking additional steps to build on the success of the technological infrastructure they created.