By Anna Barrett
Alabama Reflector
The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) last week approved a set of rules for public comment for nursing homes and assisted living facilities that associations said will improve the lives of the facilities’ residents.
The rules for assisted living facilities, referred to as ALFs in the rules, were rewritten in 2019. The rules for nursing homes were repealed and replaced in 1996, though there have been several amendments over the years.
Brad Eisemann, chair of the board at the Assisted Living Association of Alabama (ALAA), said in a phone interview Tuesday that one change that allows water temperatures to be up to 120 degrees instead of 110 degrees.
“I think everybody’s going to see a nice upgrade in water temperature, and they’re going to be more comfortable,” Eisemann said. “Expanding their comfort within the facility will just lead to resident satisfaction.”
Another significant change, Erin Thompson, interim executive director of ALAA, said, is that residents in need of hospice care will be eligible for assisted living care, as long as the resident meets all the other ALF requirements.
“Now, hospice is not a barrier to entry, which is something that I know I struggled with when I was inside of the community,” Thompson said. “We’re able to expand services for our residents, and we’re also able to expand opportunities, potentially, for the people that work inside of our communities.”
The State Committee on Public Health approved the rules for public comment last week, but Esiemann has been meeting with State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris regularly. Harris said in an interview after the committee meeting last week that the changes mostly reflect updates at the state and federal level.
“It’s time to update them, and we certainly don’t do that unilaterally,” Harris said. “We work with the industry to make sure they know what we’re doing and make sure what we’re proposing makes sense.”
There are about 300 ALFs in Alabama, which are all private pay, Eisemann said. The industry is growing, and provides about as many jobs as the hotel and ship building industry in the state, he said.
“A lot of people don’t understand how big it is. How many people we take care of, and how many facilities through rural Alabama, to the metro areas,” Eisemann said of the assisted living facility industry. “It’s such a growing industry with the aging population of the United States.”
Brandon Farmer, CEO of the Alabama Nursing Home Association (ANHA), said in a phone interview Thursday that the many small changes throughout the rules update regulations that are already in place at the federal level.
“We have regular meetings with (ADPH) to discuss how we can better serve the residents, how we can better help them in their regulatory efforts, also for us to better understand what they are seeing, what trends they see, what trajectories they see,” Farmer said.
He said there are about 228 facilities in the state, with at least one in each county, and ANHA represents nearly all of them.
“Our role is to represent those individuals, those operations, the residents, those caregivers on policy matters, both on the state level and federal level, to work with them and help create an environment that allows them to be able to best deliver the care that they’re trained and designed to deliver,” Farmer said.
Neither ALAA nor ANHA are expecting any changes to the rules during the public comment period. Thompson, who had a grandmother in a facility, said the existing proposal is a positive change for residents and caregivers alike.
“I know the difference that 10 degrees is going to make in the water,” she said. “It’s removed a lot of friction that were caught in the nuances of daily life inside of a community, and I’m happy for people moving forward.”
This article was originally published by Alabama Reflector with permission and under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
