Senate Backs Grassley Amendment to Protect Patients


? Sen. Chuck Grassley today won Senate passage of an amendment to protect quality of care for patients when a health care provider is in bankruptcy.

Grassley offered his amendment to the comprehensive, bipartisan bankruptcy he authored with Sen. Robert Torricelli. Senators voted 94 to 0 for Grassley's amendment. "There has been nothing in federal law to guarantee the well-being of patients in any bankruptcy care. With this amendment, we can make sure that bankruptcy law specifically looks out for patients. People in nursing homes shouldn't be at risk if corporations have financial difficulties. We must ensure quality of care for patients," Grassley said.

Grassley's health care amendment would:

  • provide specific guidance to trustees who may not be aware of state law requirements for maintaining patient records and/or the confidentiality issues associated with those records.

  • bring costs associated with closing a health care business into the category for administrative expenses of the bankruptcy code, including any expenses incurred by disposing of patient records and transferring patients to another health care facility.

  • provide for an ombudsman to act as an advocate for the patient. This is aimed at balancing the interests between the creditor and the patient. Grassley said these interests need balancing because the court-appointed professionals owe fiduciary duties to creditors and the estate but not necessarily to the patients.

  • require a bankruptcy trustee to use reasonable and best efforts to transfer patients when a health care business closes.

    News reports two years ago revealed that 63 residents of a California nursing home were wheeled into the parking lot on a Friday evening. Evicted by a bankruptcy trustee, they included a sobbing 88-year-old Alzheimer's patient and a stroke victim who had lived in the nursing home for two decades. Grassley said that some relatives learned of the abrupt closing from television news, and they had to pick up their parents and pack their belongings into plastic trash bags.

    The Senate began consideration of Grassley's comprehensive bankruptcy reform bill last Thursday night. The bill is aimed at reducing the number of bankruptcies filed each year. For each of the last three years bankruptcies have reached an all time high. Grassley is chairman of the Senate subcommittee in charge of bankruptcy policy. Torricelli is the subcommittee's ranking member. Grassley held a hearing on his health care bankruptcy reform provisions in June 1998.