After a newspaper series detailed graphic problems in assisted-living facilities (ALF), a state panel Monday started looking for ways to better protect ALF residents and improve oversight of the industry.
The 14-member Assisted Living Workgroup is likely months away from making recommendations. But possibilities that quickly emerged included shifting more regulatory focus from high-performing ALFs to troubled facilities and increasing penalties for wrongdoing.
Sen. Ronda Storms, a Valrico Republican who serves on the panel, said she supports increased penalties and recounted seeing ALF pictures that included syringes on floors and hanging electric wires.
Alberta Granger, a Florida Assisted Living Association official who spoke to the panel, said her group wants to reduce “fragmented regulations” that involve oversight by numerous state and local agencies. But she said it also supports ridding the system of ALF operators who jeopardize the safety of residents.
“We’re not here to support bad players,” Granger said. “If they’re bad, they need to get out.”
The state created the workgroup last month, after a Miami Herald series found that the Agency for Health Care Administration failed to adequately regulate and investigate problems at ALFs. The series detailed gruesome examples of how seniors were neglected or abused at some facilities.
The chairman of the workgroup is Larry Polivka, executive director of the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University and a well-known researcher on senior issues. But the workgroup also has drawn criticism because it includes ALF operators, along with representatives of three industry groups.
During Monday’s meeting, which was at AHCA, the panel listened to presentations from speakers who included industry officials and advocates for seniors and people with mental illnesses.
Jack McRay, advocacy manager for AARP Florida, told the panel he thinks the state should consider having something akin to a “SWAT team” to intervene in troubled ALFs before problems and injuries occur. He said the Agency for Health Care Administration already has legal powers to take disciplinary actions against ALFs.
“It seems like the intervention comes after events occur,” McRay said.
The meeting turned somewhat testy at one point because of concerns that ALF residents are hesitant to report problems because they think they will get kicked out the facilities.
“They’re afraid to speak for fear of being discharged,” Storms said.
But Larry Sherberg, who represents the Florida Assisted Living Association on the panel, said residents are often discharged from ALFs because they jeopardize the safety of other people. Also, he said state law already protects residents from retribution.
That drew a sharp reply from Don Hering, a long-term care ombudsman who said the law is being ignored. He said he is concerned about seniors who live in squalid conditions but don’t think they have anywhere else to go.
By Jim Saunders
