Under pressure from lawmakers and health care advocates who accuse it of not complying with a 10-month-old law, the Hawaii Department of Health has increased the number of inspection reports it’s posted online for long-term care facilities serving seniors and the disabled.
In 2013, the Legislature passed Act 213, which required the DOH to post inspection reports for about 1,800 long-term care facilities serving seniors and the developmentally disabled on its website. The postings were intended to provide loved ones with information about the safety and health records of potential care homes.
The DOH was required to begin posting the reports in January, but didn’t. There are now about 400 inspection reports online; most cover adult foster homes for people with developmental disabilities and community care foster family homes. Most were posted in the past two weeks, according to the DOH. Hundreds more, covering 13 types of facilities, still need to be posted.
“The department apologizes for the delay in posting the inspection records,” said Janice Okubo, a department spokeswoman. “It is unfortunate that we could not overcome our internal challenges in the past, but moving forward we are working to post the care home inspection records and we have begun posting additional reports this month and will continue to post additional records until we are up to date.”
The Legislature allocated $148,000 to the department for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 to hire two new employees and cover the costs of support equipment and website development. The DOH never advertised the jobs and never hired anyone.
Okubo said that there was a disagreement among staff as to whether the Legislature intended for the jobs to be temporary or long-term civil service positions, which led to delays in moving forward with the job postings.
However, advocates for seniors and some lawmakers have worried that Health Department staff intentionally ignored the law because they didn’t support it.
“I frankly think it is appalling that they haven’t done it,” state Sen. Laura Thielen, who was a major backer of the legislation, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last week. Thielen (D-Hawaii Kai-Waimanalo-Kailua) said DOH regulators may have developed too close of a relationship with the facilities that they are supposed to be regulating.
“Or maybe it’s just resentment for being told to do this by the Legislature,” she said.
By law, the department is required to post reports within five days of the inspection to give prospective residents timely information about the facilities. The DOH now has to work through a backlog of reports.
Okubo said the department’s staff has been working overtime the past couple of weeks to post the reports.
It is also recruiting for a temporary “89-day” hire. The job pays $12.84 an hour and doesn’t come with benefits, said Okubo. She said that the department is trying to fill the position through word of mouth.
“It is very important that we don’t post personal information on our website, so it has to be someone who has that level of attention to detail,” she said.
The DOH also plans to seek funding from the Legislature during the upcoming session, which begins in January, to hire a staff member to post the inspection reports. However, the funding, if approved, wouldn’t be available until July 1, 2016, unless an emergency appropriation is approved.
John McDermott, the state’s long-term care ombudsman, said he’s concerned that delays in fully implementing the law could undermine it.
“If you wait until the legislative session, you give people who oppose the law the opportunity to weaken it and amend it to make it ineffective,” he said. “It’s taken so long to get it passed and it is so needed.”
Last week, Sens. Suzanne Chun Oakland (D-Downtown-Nuuanu-Liliha) and Les Ihara (D-Moiliili-Kaimuki-Palolo), and Rep. Gregg Takayama (D-Pearl City-Waimalu-Pacific Palisades), all members of the Legislative Kupuna Caucus, sent to a letter to Gov. David Ige asking him to intervene in the DOH’s ongoing delays in posting reports.
“To reiterate why Act 213 is critical to the hundreds of families searching for placement for loved ones, it is only necessary to describe the situation prior to passage of the law, which unfortunately continues to this day,” the lawmakers wrote.
“Then and now, a person suddenly faced with the need to place a spouse or relative in a long-term care facility must write a letter to the Office of Health Care Assurance specifying the facilities under consideration, and then wait for a state worker to manually pull the files, redact the names, make copies, charge for copying and notify the requester that the information is available.”
The process could take as long as two weeks, the lawmakers note, which is “too slow and unacceptable.”
The lawmakers say they are open to the Health Department requesting more money next year to hire someone, but that staff should be posting the reports now and not waiting for additional funding.
