Residents Rights - Residents Bill of Rights

Residents have rights and the rights of residents, are just as powerful as human rights or the bill of rights. Federal law governs long term care residents' rights sometimes referred to as residents' bill of rights. Federal law governs residents' rights in all long term care facilities (nursing homes, adult family homes, boarding homes and veterans' homes). Federal law mandated the long term care ombudsman to protect residents' rights or residents' bill of rights in all long term care facilities.

The institutional setting and the residents' disability often results in a loss of dignity, loss of rights, and the absence of quality care. Long term care residents' rights are no lesser rights than anyone else's whether living in a long term care facility or living at home. Residents have the right to be free of unnecessary physical or chemical restraints, the right to get up and go to bed when they choose, the right to eat or not, and the right to take medication or not. The resident's bill of rights protects the residents’ quality of life and care.

Residents have rights in all long term care facilities, and the rights of residents are guaranteed. Long term care residents' rights are vital to all residents, without resident's rights in long term care facilities there would be much more abuse, neglect and poor care. Residents' rights in nursing homes, adult family homes, boarding homes and veterans' homes protect the residents’ health, safety, and welfare.

The resident council and family council also play an important part in promoting and protecting residents' right in long term care facilities. Far too often the rights of residents in nursing homes, adult family homes, boarding homes, and veteran's homes are violated. The residents' rights bill protects residents' rights in long term care facilities.

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Residents Have Rights - Protected By the Long Term Care Ombudsman

In 1987 Congress enacted the Nursing Home Reform Law that has since been incorporated into the Medicare and Medicaid regulations. Long term care residents' rights in its broadest terms, requires that every long term care resident be given whatever services are necessary to function at the highest level possible. The law gives residents a number of specific rights:

• Residents have rights; the rights of residents are to be free of unnecessary physical or chemical restraints. Vests, hand mitts, seat belts and other physical restraints, and antipsychotic drugs, sedatives, and other chemical restraints are impermissible, except when authorized by a physician, in writing, for a specified and limited period of time.

• To assist residents, facilities must inform them of the name, specialty, and means of contacting the physician responsible for the resident's care. Residents' rights provide the resident the right to participate in care planning meetings.

• When a resident experiences any deterioration in health, or when a physician wishes to change the resident's treatment, the facility must inform the resident, and the resident's physician, legal representative or interested family member.

• The residents have rights the right to gain access to all his or her records within one business day, and a right to copies of those records at a cost that is reasonable in that community. The facility must explain how to examine these records, or how to transfer the authority to obtain records to another person.

• The facility must provide a written description of legal rights, explaining state laws regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney for health care and other advance directives, along with the facility's policy on carrying out these directives.

• At the time of admission and during the stay, nursing homes must fully inform residents of the services available in the facility, and of related charges. Nursing homes may charge for services and items in addition to the basic daily rate, but only if they already have disclosed which services and items will incur an additional charge, and how much that charge will be.

• The resident has a right to privacy, which is a right that extends to all aspects of care, including care for personal needs, visits with family and friends, and communication with others through telephone and mail. Residents thus must have areas for receiving private calls or visitors so that no one may intrude and to preserve the privacy of their roommates.

• Residents have the right to share a room with a spouse, gather with other residents without staff present, and meet state and local nursing home ombudsperson or any other agency representatives. They may leave the nursing home, or belong to any church or social group. Within the home, residents have a right to manage their own financial affairs, free of any requirement that they deposit personal funds with the facility.

• Residents also can get up and go to bed when they choose, eat a variety of snacks outside meal times, decide what to wear, choose activities, and decide how to spend their time. The nursing home must offer a choice at main meals, because individual tastes and needs vary. Residents, not staff, determine their hours of sleep and visits to the bathroom. Residents may self-administer medication.

• Residents may bring personal possessions to the nursing home such as clothing, furnishings and jewelry. Residents may expect staff to take responsibility for assisting in the protection of items or locating lost items, and should inquire about facility policies for replacing missing items. Residents should expect kind, courteous, and professional behavior from staff. Staff should treat residents like adults.

• Nursing home residents may not be moved to a different room, a different nursing home, a hospital, back home or anywhere else without advance notice, an opportunity for appeal and a showing that such a move is in the best interest of the resident or necessary for the health of other nursing home residents.

• The resident has a right to be free of interference, coercion, discrimination, and reprisal in exercising his or her rights. Being assertive and identifying problems usually brings good results, and nursing homes have a responsibility not only to assist residents in raising individual concerns, but also to respond promptly to those concerns.