Report suggests National Assisted Living Center is needed to manage growth.

A new federal study on quality standards for assisted living facilities suggests that the industry should be overseen by a national guidelines center to manage its rapid growth.

"Assuring Quality in Assisted Living: Guidelines for Federal and State Policy, State Regulations and Operations," offers 110 recommendations on ways to measure, improve and manage the running of the nation's 37,000 assisted living facilities.

The 18-month, 381-page study was prepared by the Assisted Living Workgroup, a coalition of nearly 50 member groups in the long term care industry, consumer advocates, regulators and accrediting bodies. ALW members presented the report before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging.

The report's recommendations include:

* Creation of a National Center for Excellence in Assisted Living to analyze and suggest regulations. The center would grade the performance of each assisted living facility and offer such data to consumers and state officials.

* Developing rules to ensure that "trained and awake staff are on duty" at all times, and that medication is safely and properly administered.

* Requiring written disclosure of all facility costs, services and policies, including minimum notice for changes or termination.

* Increasing state and federal funding for the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program, the national network responsible for handling residents' complaints.

ALW's report was commissioned in 2001 to give the government a better view of what is--and isn't--happening in the fast-growing assisted living industry. From 1998 to 2001, the number of assisted living facilities in the United States grew by 48 percent, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy in Portland, Maine.

Such growth has resulted in numerous charges of abuse, neglect and miscues, similar to the accusations that have plagued the nursing home industry for years.

The Alzheimer's Association in Chicago was one of the nearly three dozen groups that approved most of the report's findings. "We voted in favor of almost all of the recommendations, whether they are specific to dementia or not, because we believe that, if implemented, they will approve quality of care for all assisted living residents," AA Vice President of Public Policy and Advocacy Stephen McConnell said.

Douglas Pace, director of assisted living and continuing care for the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging in Washington D.C., said the report will ultimately "raise the bar" for quality in the assisted living industry.

But some, such as Donna Lenhoff, executive director of the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform in Washington, D.C., said many of the study's recommendations don't go far enough to protect the health and safety of residents.

"Many of the recommendations are based on the rose-tinted assumption that all providers provide adequate care," Lenhoff said. "This false assumption has caused many of the recommendations to be off target or hopelessly vague."

Lenhoff's group and nearly a dozen others that were part of the Assisted Living Group have since published a separate report, "Policy Principles for Assisted Living," to help policymakers set appropriate assisted living standards in the future. The report is available at www.nccnhr.org.

The Assisted Living Workgroup's report is available at http://alworkgroup.org or by calling 800-508-9442; the National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform's report is available at www.nccnhr.org.