# Understanding the PREPARE LTC Act

This bill is designed to strengthen safety standards and oversight at nursing homes during disease outbreaks. It locks in infection control requirements that were developed during COVID-19 and makes them permanent rules that nursing homes must follow whenever there's any serious infectious disease emergency—not just during pandemics.

The bill requires nursing homes to maintain strict infection control practices, emergency preparedness plans, and staffing standards during disease outbreaks. It also prevents the government from reducing how often it inspects nursing homes during these emergencies. Currently, inspectors can cut back on visits during crises, but this bill says that can't happen anymore. The government must keep checking on nursing homes regularly to make sure they're following the rules, especially when it comes to infection control and whether they have enough staff to care for residents.

Another key part of the bill requires nursing homes to keep reporting their staffing numbers to the government every three months, and the government can't waive this requirement during outbreaks. The bill also mandates that the government publicly share data about what problems inspectors find at nursing homes—specifically problems related to infection control and staffing—so families and the public can see which facilities are struggling. This information must be updated every two weeks during disease emergencies. Additionally, the government has to study what went wrong at nursing homes during COVID-19 and report back to Congress about deficiencies in infection control and staffing.

Essentially, this bill aims to prevent the kind of problems that occurred in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic by making safety standards permanent and keeping oversight consistent, even during emergencies.

PREPARE LTC Act

Pascrell, Bill

Promoting Restoration of Emergency Preparedness and Advancing Response to Epidemics in Long-Term Care Act or the PREPARE LTC Act This bill provides statutory authority for certain infection control and emergency preparedness requirements for Medicare skilled nursing facilities and Medicaid nursing facilities, and expands certain requirements to apply to other infectious disease outbreaks beyond COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019). Specifically, the bill provides statutory authority for regulations that require, and set standards for, infection control programs and emergency preparedness programs in such facilities. The bill requires facilities to report information concerning any infectious disease outbreak that results in a state or national emergency in accordance with the standards for COVID-19 reporting. It also prohibits the Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Services from reducing the frequency of compliance surveys or waiving direct care staffing reports during such outbreaks. Additionally, the Government Accountability Office must report on deficiencies relating to COVID-19 infection control and direct care staffing requirements for skilled nursing facilities.