Yesterday, Consumer Voice, along with other advocates on behalf of our nation’s 1.2 million nursing home residents and half a million nursing home workers, sent a letter to the House Committee on Energy & Commerce’s Health Subcommittee voicing opposition to the Building America’s Health Care Workforce Act (H.R. 468) and the Ensuring Seniors’ Access to Quality Care Act (H.R. 3227). Both bills would significantly weaken training requirements for nurse aides in nursing homes. 

• H.R 468 would reinstitute a pandemic-era regulatory waiver allowing untrained aides to work in nursing homes for longer than four months without meeting training and certification requirements. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), when rescinding this waiver, stated that it had likely contributed to resident harm, including weight loss, resident abuse, improper transferring, and other negative health outcomes. 

• H.R. 3227 would allow nursing homes cited for egregious violations, such as medical record falsification or failing to report resident abuse, to continue to operate their own nurse aid training programs.

Read the full letter.

The subcommittee will be considering these dangerous bills today. Please let your members of Congress know that we cannot go backward in nursing home care and that it is critical that high-quality training is provided to all nursing home workers.