Nursing Home Inspectors Restricted by Last Minute Bush Regulation
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Efforts are already in the works to overturn a late-term regulation issued by the Bush administration in September. A report on Bloomberg explained that this new regulation designated state inspectors, Medicare and Medicaid contractors as federal employees. This rule affects approximately 16,000 nursing facilities nationwide and is forcing plaintiffs with potential personal injury actions, and the defendants opposing them, to take painstaking efforts to obtain information.
Federal employees are groups usually protected from providing information to either side in private litigation and litigants may need to seek court orders to get vital discovery information. Eric M. Carlson, an attorney with the National Senior Citizens Law Center, explained:
Government inspectors have the right to go into nursing homes and investigate, and they learn things that residents and families otherwise could never find out.
The new regulation prevents these state inspectors from becoming involved in private lawsuits implicating facilities in the federal assistance program unless they have prior approval by the head of the Health and Human Services Department.
This regulation was put into place under the guise of promoting efficiency by these newly designated federal employees in their everyday tasks.
Requests for these employees to participate in private cases "divert employees from their federal survey, certification and enforcement responsibilities," the Bush administration said in a supporting document. "The cumulative effect of these requests can impede these activities."
Nursing facilities also feel the strain from this new regulation. An official from the American Health Care Association explained that nursing facilities are restricted from obtaining information from these inspectors regarding penalties, citations and orders to shut down nursing homes.