Senator Urges ‘Riot Act’ on Rest Homes

Members of the Senate Aging Committee today urged quick action by the Reagan Administration to correct widespread health, safety and sanitary violations in nursing homes cited by a new report.

“This is not a happy day,” said Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.). “Until the last several days, I had been led to believe along with most Americans that things were getting much better” in nursing homes.

But the report by the Senate Special Committee on Aging shows “we are not going uphill, we are going downhill,” Pryor said at a hearing called by the panel.

The staff report said that more than a third of the nation’s skilled nursing homes don’t meet at least one of the basic health, safety or sanitary standards and inspectors have found an alarming increase in violations since 1982.

‘Read the Riot Act’

Pryor told Dr. William Roper, the new head of the Health Care Financing Administration, to call together state and federal inspectors “and read them the riot act.”