Nursing Home Patient Care
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Congratulations to Spiegel and Hurst for their excellent two-part report on nursing home care in California.
One of the questions raised in these articles is especially important: Why doesn’t Medi-Cal reimbursement contain financial incentives to encourage quality care?
The answer is because Gov. George Deukmejian and the state Department of Health Services refused to even consider such an approach. In 1984 and again in 1985, I carried legislation which would have set up a task force to recommend ways to tie reimbursement to the quality of care provided in nursing homes. The Department of Health Services opposed the legislation both times, and persuaded the governor to veto my bill in 1984 and to rally Republican opposition to kill the bill by a narrow margin in 1985.
In his veto message in 1984, Deukmejian said my legislation was unnecessary because, “The Department of Health Services in conjunction with the Department of Aging closely monitors the quality of care in our long-term care facilities.”
Now your reporters have documented just how well these state agencies have protected the patients in our nursing homes.
SEN. GARY K. HART
D-Santa Barbara
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