Unannounced
inspections still OK
at adult residential
care homes

Legislature Directory

By Mike Yuen
Star-Bulletin

A House panel has rejected a bill that would have forced the state Health Department to tell operators of adult residential care homes the approximate date and time their facilities would undergo annual inspections.

Under the measure quashed yesterday by the House Consumer Protection Committee, a two-week notice in writing of upcoming inspections would have been required.

The bill was earlier approved by the House Human Services and Health panels, which had deleted from the original bill a provision that inspections to confirm deficiencies or to check complaints would have had to have been made at specified times disclosed to the operators of the residential care homes.

The bill was introduced by nine lawmakers, including House Human Services Chairman Dennis Arakaki (D, Kalihi Valley).

House Consumer Protection Chairman Ron Menor (D, Mililani) said he recommended spiking the measure because it generated testimony unanimously in opposition.

Opposition came from the Health Department, the Executive Office on Aging, the Honolulu Fire Department, the Hawaii Long Term Care Association, the American Association of Retired Persons and the Healthcare Association of Hawaii, representing acute care hospitals and two-thirds of the long-term care facilities in the isles.

Marilyn Seely, director of the Executive Office on Aging, said passage of the measure would "seriously compromise the safety and care received by residents living in adult residential care homes."

Honolulu Fire Chief Attilio Leonardi said 33, or 25 percent, of the 131 inspections of residential care homes with five or fewer clients failed to attain a "satisfactory" rating when examined by the Fire Prevention Bureau during the last three months of 1998.

Health Deputy Director Paula Yoshioka said the department's current practice is to let nursing homes know a month in advance that they will be subjected to annual inspections. "They have a general idea when we're coming," Yoshioka acknowledged, since inspections are done on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Seely added: "The long-term care ombudsman has also received several calls from families complaining that their loved ones were being moved to another residential care home because the state inspectors were coming and either the home had more residents than they were licensed for or the resident's condition had deteriorated to the point where they really belonged in a nursing home."