Ensuring Seniors’ Access to Quality Care Act

Key Points

• The bill changes rules that currently ban nursing homes from running their own nurse aide training programs after receiving quality-of-care penalties. Under the new system, a facility's training program can only be disapproved for up to 2 years, and only if the facility was fined at least $10,697 for substandard care AND has not corrected the problems.
• Facilities that fix their problems can get their training programs restored. The disapproval is rescinded if deficiencies are remedied, the facility has had no patient harm deficiencies in the prior 2 years, and the original penalty did not involve immediate jeopardy related to abuse or neglect.
• Nursing homes and other Medicare/Medicaid providers gain access to the National Practitioner Data Bank to run background checks on potential employees. This helps them spot workers with a history of professional misconduct or disciplinary actions in other states before hiring them.
• Facilities that are currently banned from running training programs under the old rules will have those bans lifted once the law takes effect, as long as they have corrected the issues that led to the ban. HHS must issue implementing regulations within 180 days of enactment.