Nursing homes and play a unique dual role in the long-term care continuum, serving as a place where people receive needed health care and a place they call home. Ineffective responses to the complex challenges of nursing home care have resulted in a system that often fails to ensure the well-being and safety of nursing home residents.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a committee of experts to examine how the United States delivers, finances, regulates, and measures the quality of nursing home care, which included Professor David Stevenson, PhD, who has long studied long-term care and aging since joining the Department in 2013.
The devastating impact of the pandemic on nursing home residents and renewed attention to the long-standing weaknesses that impede the provision of high-quality nursing home care.
With support from a coalition of sponsors, reviewers and input from other experts, the Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes to delivered a report that identified seven broad goals, which provide the overarching framework for a comprehensive approach to improving the quality of care in nursing homes. The committee presents an interrelated set of recommendations to achieve each of these goals.
The broad goals include delivering quality, person-centered care, increasing transparency and oversight, ensuring staff are well-trained and adequately compensated, and focusing on quality assurance and measurement.
