Iowa Senator Takes Swing at Nursing Home Abuse

Prompted by recent stories of nursing home abuse surrounding the posting of inappropriate pics and videos of elderly residents to social media platforms, some U.S. Senators are demanding answers.

Senator Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is asking the U.S. Justice Department to provide information about how aggressively it pursues elder abuse in nursing homes.

Stating that “we owe it to our nation’s elderly to ensure quality nursing home care, which the debasement of patients does not fulfill”, Grassley has asked the Justice Department to quantify the number of civil and criminal cases the agency has handled pertaining to this type of nursing home abuse within the last five years.

This follows Senator Donnelly’s, D-Ind., request for an investigation by the Senate Aging Committee and Senator Tom Carper’s, D-Del., inquiry directed at federal privacy regulators regarding the issue.

As most of the criminal charges in these cases have typically been brought by state or local prosecutors, the inquiries from the Senators hints at a more active federal role in protecting nursing home residents from abuse in the future.