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Assistant Secretary for Aging, Lance Robertson, wrote a blog post on the 40th year of the LTCOP

February 19, 2019

ACL Administrator and Assistant Secretary for Aging, Lance Robertson wrote a blog post commemorating the 40th year of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program.

The post highlights accomplishments of ombudsman programs across the country, presents ACL's ombudsman program data from fiscal year 2017, and highlights priority areas on which to focus the future.

According to the data from fiscal year 2017, the most common type of complaints ombudsman programs received were regarding improper eviction or inadequate discharge planning. Of the 200,000 complaints resolved in that year, more than 14,000 related to improper eviction or inadequate discharge planning. They also provided over 400,000 instances of information and assistance on resident rights, care and community options to residents and over 125,000 instances of information and assistance to facility staff on issues of discharge planning, care, rights and abuse prevention.

ACL set three areas to prioritize their work with the ombudsman program: implementing the Ombudsman Program Final Rule; Ombudsman Program Evaluation; and the National Ombudsman Reporting System (NORS) Data Collection.

Read the full blog post here.