Hospice Foundation of America - for brochures on how to select a hospice or how to be a hospice volunteer. A Nationwide Campaign Relief may be on the way for older Americans who are abused, neglected or in some other way taken advantage of in nursing homes. As part of a new campaign, the Justice Department is joining forces with state and local agencies to crack down on nursing homes that subject their residents to various types of abuse and neglect. To bring about greater protection, officials say they will enforce more vigorously health codes and other laws dictating quality of care. Also, the initiative will focus on nursing-home operators who defraud the goveniment at the expense of taxpayers, very often undermining care for residents in the process.
Chains own about half of the nursing homes in the country.
But the Justice Department says the states have not had enough success identifying and punishing abusive and negligent nursing homes under the current system. Rather, she adds, it's the need to safeguard people who live in nursing homes. Much of the new network is in place. Already, it has generated action in Oklahoma. There, the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI worked closely with state officials to arrest a ranking state health department official and a nursing-home operator on a federal bribery charge.