The amendment Grassley offered to the emergency spending measure under consideration by the U.S. Senate would provide another $1.4 million to the Department of Health and Human Services Departmental Appeals Board to expedite the consideration of appeals from nursing homes of penalties levied by the Health Care Financing Administration.
Grassley said it is important to beef-up this process because delays in the appeals results in a delay of improvements in the quality of care provided nursing home residents. "As it stands today, the fines are not being collected, nursing homes must incur unnecessary legal fees while waiting for resolution of their appeals, and worse of all, nursing home residents are not receiving the better care that should result from a system that penalizes wrongdoing."
Right now, there is a backlog of 700 nursing home appeals, and the Board can decide only around 20-25 cases each year with its current resources. Adjudication of such cases is very labor intensive.
