Is California’s Public Health Dept. Ignoring Nursing Home Abuses?

California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR), one the state’s squeakiest wheels when it comes to sounding off about nursing home abuses, is accusing the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) of taking a “see no evil, hear no evil” approach in monitoring conditions of state’s more than 1,100 nursing facilities. But the department says that really isn’t the case at all; it’s more a matter of how much oversight the agency is capable of handling at the moment. While the department has received approval to hire additional staff, it still doesn’t have the capacity to do everything CANHR would like it to do. CANHR says the CDPH is officially opposing AB 348, a bill by Assembly Member Cheryl Brown which would require timely investigations of abuse and neglect reports filed by nursing homes. “In fighting to preserve its longstanding practice of ignoring nursing home abuse complaints, the Department of Public Health has once again sided with perpetrators of abuse against their victims,” CANHR says in a prepared statement. The CDPH in fact has taken a position of opposition to the  bill. Indeed, the agency on July 27 sent a letter to Brown letting her know exactly why it was opposing the legislator’s bill. “Unfortunately, CDPH cannot undertake the additional workload imposed by AB 348,” Monica Wagoner, the department’s deputy direc [...]

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8/28/15 5 PM

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Reprinted from Aging News Alert  http://www.cdpublications.com/ana/ - Try a sample