“The nursing homes, they know the system and they really game it to where they maximize their advantage,” said Tony Chicotel, a lawyer at California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, a nonprofit group. Complaints about evictions have caught the attention of federal regulators, who are now seeking ways to step up enforcement of the federal laws that protect residents of the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes. The number of complaints about the discharge and evictions of residents was rising through 2015, the most recent year for which data is available. That year, there were 9,192 complaints about the discharge and eviction of nursing home residents, out of a total of 140,145 complaints, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Chicotel, the advocacy group lawyer, said that the federal regulations governing nursing homes were already strong but that enforcement was weak.

Source: New York Times February 22, 2018 10:20 UTC