(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
This story was originally published by Iowa Capital Dispatch and is unaltered.
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Committee backs ‘granny cam’ bill, citing issues with nursing home inspections [1]
['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- January']
Date: 2024-01-30
A bill that would prevent Iowa nursing homes from prohibiting the use of family-installed cameras inside residents’ rooms was approved by a House committee on Tuesday.
House File 537 would ensure that Iowa nursing homes allow the use of so-called “granny cams” that provide families with a live video feed of activity inside a resident’s room. For residents who reside in a shared room, the roommate would have to agree to the use of the camera, and a notice posted to the door would alert visitors and staff to the presence of any cameras.
Variations of the bill have surfaced several times in recent years but have been opposed by industry lobbyists. Over the past two years, however, there have been a number of deaths tied to regulatory violations in Iowa nursing homes and the state has faced criticism for the manner in which it handles complaints and inspections.
Rep. Timi Brown-Powers, a Democrat from Waterloo, told colleagues on the House Health and Human Services Committee on Tuesday that while she hasn’t supported the bill in the past, it is needed now.
“I have, historically, not loved the bill,” she said. “But I think we’re at a point in our nursing homes for our seniors and those other persons that have to live in long-term care that they deserve to have some safety measures put in place. I think we all know, in this room, that we need to do better with inspections in long-term care. We need to have more staff in long-term care. And I don’t see those two issues improving in the near future. So, therefore, I don’t think the folks living in long-term care deserve to sacrifice for those system downfalls. So, at this juncture, I think this bill does a good job of protecting (seniors).”
Brown-Powers said her past concerns have centered on the patient-privacy provisions of the federal Health Information Portability and Accountability Act and the need to preserve residents’ dignity.
“At this juncture, I want to support this bill,” Brown-Powers said. “I think that persons living in long-term care deserve for us to do something moving forward, and I think doing nothing is not an option at this juncture.”
Rep. Joel Fry, a Republican from Osceola, said he, too, now supports the bill after opposing it in the past due to what he called “confidentiality” concerns.
“I look forward to what this will do for seniors, for some of the most vulnerable in the state,” Fry said. “And I am thankful that the lobby was willing to work with the Legislature in coming up with a compromise that works, I think, for all parties.”
The bill passed out of the committee to the House floor on a vote of 20-1.
For the past several years, variations of the bill have faced stiff opposition from lobbyists in the nursing home industry and haven’t advanced. Recently, however, the Iowa Health Care Association, which had promised to immediately “kill” the bill if it resurfaced this year, indicated it was taking no position on the legislation.
Other states allow, or even provide, cameras
To date, 16 states have approved legislation that expressly allows the installation of resident-room surveillance cameras inside nursing homes. Those states are Arizona, Illinois, Missouri, Texas, Kansas, Washington, New Mexico, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Utah and Wisconsin.
New Jersey, in fact, has long had a program in which citizens can borrow micro-surveillance cameras that can be hidden within a care facility where neglect or abuse is suspected.
While Iowa’s legislation calls for facility administrators to be informed of any cameras and for signage to be placed outside rooms where the cameras are deployed, the cameras loaned out by the New Jersey Office of Attorney General through the Safe-Care Cam Program are intended to be concealed.
The program has been in effect for seven years and, according to the attorney general, it is intended to let New Jersey families “monitor how caregivers are treating their loved ones when they think no one is looking.”
Within a year of the program’s launch, a caregiver working in a Bergen County assisted living facility was arrested and charged with assaulting the woman she’d been hired to care for, with prosecutors citing video footage captured by a hidden camera on loan from the Safe-Care Cam Program.
The New Jersey program was initially limited to monitoring in-home caregiving, but was quickly expanded to allow the cameras’ use in nursing homes and assisted living centers.
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[1] Url:
https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/01/30/committee-backs-granny-cam-bill-citing-issues-with-nursing-home-inspections/
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