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Nursing Home Dining is Making Improvements Albeit Not As Fast As Desired
When the average person imagines a nursing home, thoughts of bingo tournaments, disinfectant saturating the air and bland food come to mind. Thankfully, a rush of recent regulatory change-ups have done some good in bringing the residents of nursing homes some much needed tastiness to the last of those elements. November 2016 saw five years of improvements upon regulations for nursing homes, marking the first innovation in the industry since 1991.
These new regulations require elder care facilities to offer menus that satisfy any special needs of residents. Further, the menus must change ever so often and still meet dietary and nutritional mandates. Homes can also grow their own food, purchase it from local food service companiesand even admit food brought to residents by their friends and family. Lastly, both meals and snacks can be served at the residents’ whims, rather than facility-dictated times.
These changes exist so that residences have some level of choice and control over their diet and to allow them to enjoy any sort of cultural meals they cherish, be it kugel, falafel or lo mein. The changes also means that homes can work with agricultural programs to acquire produce.
While Phasoe One of the regulations took effect in 2016, Phase Three started in 2019. Facilities found lacking in adherence to the new regulations will be deemed deficient and suffer penalties that range from a diminished rating, fines or even disconnection from Medicare. Overall, these changes are welcomed but only as far as homes are willing to put them into effect. It seems there is still a great deal of challenge to keeping every federally-funded institution up to these regulations. As it stands, 1.5 million residents live within 15,000 facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid. While good nutrition helps keep these elders’ bodies and immune systems in a good position, access to tasty food keeps malnutrition at bay.
No matter how old someone is, certain foods can tap into positive memories from that person’s younger days. It is this very notion that makes access to tasty foods known to an elder all the more vital, restoring some sense of normalcy and choice they may otherwise find lacking.
Sue Hargreaves, an administrator for one Washington, D.C., nursing home, remarked that these sorts of changes help homes do good for their residents. She admitted to having purchased Chinese food for one Cantonese resident and shared that while the cost was higher than a standard meal, the resident truly appreciates the effort. Furthermore, her staff have been working to grow an herb garden on the premises.
Despite the positive response to this progress in home conditions, some caution remains. Robyn Grant, a major name with Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care has said that the hundreds of regulations that homes must endure are good but the lack of any increasing in funding means that many homes engage in a precarious balancing act. Further, Grant only sees more mandates without financial encouragement in the future.
Grant admitted that while standards have risen, food budgets have shrunk, sometimes to values of less than $1 a meal. When costs are already quite low, it puts on even more pressure to offer individualized dining options. Facilities are being tasked to do more with resources they have already been used to. Grant also worries that scarcity of staff often dovetails with scarcity of funding. She remarked that a home can honor its residents’ dining preferences but that customized menu will just sit on the table without enough staff to work with those residents, some of whom need help chewing.
Within the first year of Phase One’s changes, 61,000 food-related deficiencies were flagged among nursing homes across the United States. Hargreaves commented that her hope is for the new regulations to be followed to their spirit rather than just the letter. She truly believes that the multiple-phase regulatory overhaul is ultimately a force for good among the elderly
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