By Robert Pear
WASHINGTON
— Federal investigators say they have found huge gaps in the regulation
of assisted living facilities, a shortfall that they say has
potentially jeopardized the care of hundreds of thousands of people
served by the booming industry.
The
federal government lacks even basic information about the quality of
assisted living services provided to low-income people on Medicaid, the
Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of
Congress, says in a report to be issued on Sunday.
Billions
of dollars in government spending is flowing to the industry even as it
operates under a patchwork of vague standards and limited supervision
by federal and state authorities. States reported spending more than $10
billion a year in federal and state funds for assisted living services
for more than 330,000 Medicaid beneficiaries, an average of more than
$30,000 a person, the Government Accountability Office found in a survey
of states.
States
are supposed to keep track of cases involving the abuse, neglect,
exploitation or unexplained death of Medicaid beneficiaries in assisted
living facilities. But, the report said, more than half of the states
were unable to provide information on the number or nature of such
cases.
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Source: The New York Times (via Empire Report New York)
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