Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program (OAA, Title VII, Chapter 2, Sections 711/712)
The Purpose of the Program and How It Works
Long-Term Care Ombudsmen are advocates for residents of nursing homes, board and care homes, assisted living facilities and similar adult care facilities. They work to resolve problems of individual residents and to bring about changes at the local, state and national levels that will improve residents’ care and quality of life.
Begun in 1972 as a demonstration program, the Ombudsman Program today exists in all states under the authorization of the Older Americans Act. Each state has an Office of the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman, headed by a full-time state ombudsman. Thousands of local ombudsman staff and volunteers work in hundreds of communities throughout the country as part of the statewide ombudsman programs, assisting residents and their families and providing a voice for those unable to speak for themselves.
The statewide programs are federally funded under Titles III and VII of the Act and other federal, state and local sources. The AoA-funded National Long-Term Care Ombudsman Resource Center, operated by the National Consumers’ Voice for Quality Long-Term Care (NCCNHR), in conjunction with the National Association of State Agencies on Aging (NASUA), provides training and technical assistance to state and local ombudsmen.
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Data Highlight Extensive Services Provided to Seniors
In FY 2007, about 12,600 volunteers, 8,668 of whom were certified to investigate complaints, devoted 670,000 hours to serving facility residents. In addition more than 1,300 paid ombudsmen served in 569 localities nationwide.
Ombudsmen investigated over 282,000 complaints made by 186,403 individuals and provided information on long-term care, including alternatives to institutional care, to another 328,341 people.
State and local ombudsmen visited 79 percent of all nursing homes and 46 percent of all board and care, assisted living and similar homes on a regular basis. They conducted 7,800 training sessions in facilities on such topics as residents’ rights. They also provided 127,500 individual consultations to long-term care facility managers and staff and participated in 21,000 resident council and 4,500 family council meetings.
For more information on ombudsman activities and the types of cases/complaints that they investigated, see 2007 NORS data.
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Funding History
Title VII Chapter 2 (Ombudsman Program) congressional appropriations in recent years were as follows:
| FY 2005 |
$14,162,000 |
| FY 2006 |
$15,000,000 |
| FY 2007 |
$15,010,000 |
| FY 2008 |
$15,577,000 |
Total program expenditures from all sources, including Title III, Title VII and other federal, state and local sources, in recent years were as follows:
| FY 2004 |
$72,547,000 |
| FY 2005 |
$78,570,000 |
| FY 2006 |
$77,766,000 |
| FY 2007 |
$81,733,000 |
| FY 2008 |
not yet available |
Sources and amounts of funds the states expended from each source are provided in 2007 funding data – Table A-9.
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Resources and Useful Links
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For More Information
Questions relating to the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program should be directed to Sue Wheaton.
| Last Modified: 4/6/2009 12:12:14 PM |
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