How The National Consumer Voice Drives Change in Long-Term Care
Who stands up for the rights of long-term care residents? The National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care plays a pivotal role in advocating for vulnerable seniors, but how effective is it really? This organization fights for better care, more accountability, and stronger policies to protect our elders. In this week’s episode, nursing home abuse lawyer Rob Schenk welcomes guest Lori Smetanka to talk about the critical work of the National Consumer Voice, diving into its achievements, ongoing challenges, and what more needs to be done to ensure quality care for all long-term care residents.
Schenk:
Who are the national consumer voice for quality long term care? Stick around.
Hello out there. Welcome back to the nursing home abuse podcast today. We have an episode that’s that spotlighting the leading organization advocating for the rights of long term care residents across the country. And that is the national consumer voice for quality long term care.
We have back again on the show Lori Smetanka from that organization and she’s going to tell us all about their mission, what they do and how you can help them advocate on behalf of nursing home residents.
We have the executive director who took time out of her day to talk to us. And that’s Lori Smetanka. Lori Smetanka is a prominent advocate for long term care consumers with vast expertise in nursing home and long term care policy. She testifies before Congress and collaborates with federal agencies.
Previously, she directed the National Long Term Care Ombudsman Resource Center for 12 years. Lori’s dedication to advocating for individuals receiving longterm care and services is recognized nationally. And we recognize her on this program today. Lori, welcome to the show.
Visit The Consumer Voice for comprehensive resources and guidance on long-term care and the rights of residents.
Smetanka:
Great to be here. Nice to see you again.
What is the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care?
Schenk:
It’s funny to me, probably not funny to anybody else irrelevant is that I had on the same tie that I was wearing on our last. show together. So I had to go, I had to go run and change ties. So it didn’t look like I only have one tie like that one Seinfeld episode where the lady only has one dress.
Anyway I’m so glad to have you back on. Last time we talked about staffing. This time I wanted to have you back on just to essentially highlight your organization. So this is the most softball question that you ever going to get in your life, but who are the national consumer voice for quality long term care?
Smetanka:
I really appreciate you having us back to talk about the work that we do at consumer voice. So the consumer voice is a almost 50 year old national nonprofit advocacy organization. We were founded in 1975. We. came about because of public concern at that time about the quality of care in nursing homes.
There were a lot of abuses that were being reported in the press and a lot of complaints about the quality of care. And our founder brought together groups of advocates from across the country and formed the organization to advocate to improve nursing home care and for individuals receiving care and services in the facilities to protect rights and to improve quality of life.
Learn about the importance of adequate staffing in nursing homes and its impact on care quality from The Consumer Voice’s staffing resource page.
Schenk:
Wow, 50 years. That’s pretty good.
Smetanka:
Next year will be our 50 year anniversary.
What does the National Consumer Voice do?
Schenk:
Wow. Are any of the original founders still around and kicking and rocking and rolling or what?
Smetanka:
Absolutely. Our original founder we’re still connected with her. She’s retired now, but I actually had the good fortune to see her just a few weeks ago. And we still are very connected to a lot of people who were around at the beginning stages of the organization. We’re very lucky in that respect.
Schenk:
The consumer voice is advocacy. That’s the main, that’s the main mission, right? But. Like on a day to day basis, what are you guys doing?
Smetanka:
Absolutely. So we do our work in a couple different ways. We look at the work that we do in terms of how we can represent the consumer voice, the voice of the person receiving care and services, family members, people needing long term care.
And so we are the leading national voice that represents consumers and issues in long term care. And we do that in a few different ways. One is that we are very focused on advocating for public policies, laws, regulations, practices that support quality care and quality of life that is responsive to consumers needs in all long term care settings, whether that be nursing homes.
We also have Expanded our work to include assisted living personal care. But we really focus on trying to advocate for public policies that support consumers perspective. And that was the topic of what we talked about last time in terms of staffing, because there are new laws. There’s a new regulations rather that we’ve been advocating for a long time to improve.
Requirements related to staffing. So that’s 1 thing that we do. We analyze and comment on laws. We serve as technical experts with policy bakers. We issue reports and briefs to influence policymaking. We also importantly work to empower and educate. Residents and family members about their rights about how to advocate about where to get help if they should need it, if they’re not having a good experience at a long term care facility.
So we provide a lot of information on our website, which people can access. at www. theconsumervoice. org but we also respond to requests for assistance. We’re not a direct service provider we can’t get involved in your case specifically, but we can refer you to an ombudsman, to an to a legal services program, or to an attorney in your area, or we can refer you to resources in your community that can provide you some assistance.
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But we want to provide information that people can use to self advocate so that they can go and say, Hey, these are my rights and I’m entitled to these services. And you should be helping me if that’s in the nursing home. We also work to help support resident family council development because that’s a big part of advocacy in long term care.
So we do that as well. And then we also work to train and support. other advocates, including long term care ombudsman, so that as they are working to advocate on behalf of consumers they have the tools and skills that they need to do that very effectively.
Schenk:
So what is the, how big is the consumer voice? Like how many people in other departments and. Tell me about that.
Smetanka:
We are a small but mighty organization. We actually just added our 10th staff person. So we are just a small team of 10 who do just a tremendous amount of work. And we’re really proud of the work.
Schenk:
No, I’m sorry to interrupt.
I’m only laughing because I thought it was 10 times that. Like you guys do so much stuff with, and you just added the 10th person. That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
Smetanka:
We just added a 10th person about a month ago. And we are proud of the work that we are able to do and the impact that we are able to have.
And we do rely with a lot of support, not only on our staff, but on our board, we have a leadership council of advocates around the country. And one of the hallmarks of the work that we do. Is that we stay very connected to people that are receiving services to residents and their families and they help guide and direct the work that we do.
We include residents and family members on our board and leadership council. We also have advisory committees of residents and family members that we work with on a regular basis to help guide and direct our work.
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Schenk:
Do you guys do I understand that your You put together position papers and you put together reports and stuff, but are you guys doing anything in terms of I don’t think lobbying is the right word, but like communicating with our representatives and on the federal and state level.
Smetanka:
There are some restrictions on lobbying for nonprofits. So we certainly work to adhere to that, but we absolutely do work with congressional members and staff. in Congress, both senators and representatives. We don’t do as much at the state level. We rely on our state partners to do state advocacy, but we regularly work with members in Congress and their staff.
In fact our policy team does a lot of hill visits and education of staff members. But we also work with agency staff. So representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for example, which is the agency responsible for regulating nursing homes and overseeing nursing homes.
We work with them a lot. We bring the consumer voice to that policy table. Sometimes literally we’ve arranged. dialogues between federal officials and residents. Historically, we do that on an annual basis. But we work very closely with agency staff as well. Department of justice the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services and other agencies.
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Schenk:
Amazing. I’m still reeling from you having nine now 10 people. Yeah. Tell me then how do you guys determine like on the advocacy level or in terms of that topic, how do we know, obviously I know that you’re advocating for the nursing home resident, but how do you know what to do? Is it like, Hey, this year we really want to try to tackle staffing or maybe based on the administration that’s in the office right now, maybe we can get this done or something like that. Like, how does that work?
Smetanka:
Sure, so we work with our board and leadership council to establish our advocacy priorities.
And they’ve been fairly consistent over time in terms of the main priorities that we’re advocating for. We focus broadly on issues related to quality, related to rights protections, related to self empowerment. And we really work under those types of umbrellas, but there are some certain issues that have been repeatedly ones that have needed attention, like staffing in long term care facilities, which, as we mentioned, was the subject of our last conversation.
That’s 1 where. There has been a real need for very focused and a lot of advocacy, and that’s 1 that we have done some work on enforcement of standards is another area that we put a lot of attention into because, the standards aren’t any good if they’re not being enforced and facilities being held accountable for them.
In the last couple of years, we’ve increased our efforts around advocacy around transparency and accountability of nursing homes and owners and operators of long term care facilities with respect to the care that they provide in the facilities or that they allow their facilities to provide and also with how they spend the money that they receive from Medicare and Medicaid, which are public dollars.
For comprehensive healthcare policy and regulatory information that impacts senior care, refer to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
And what, what we have found and what we’re concerned about is that too much of that money is not going into direct care. So we see nursing home companies being very highly profitable, and yet they are shortchanging the amount of staff that they have available, the amount of resources and supplies that they’re putting into nursing homes and residents are suffering.
It’s very connected to the work. I know that you do in terms of what with your clients. So we’ve been very focused much more in that respect over the last couple of years. And then there are a lot of opportunities that come up. As you mentioned, sometimes administrations are very focused in certain areas and or Congress may be focused in a particular area.
So we also look for opportunities that fit into our priorities in terms of establishing. Where we put our time.
Engage with programs aimed at improving the lives of older Americans through the Administration for Community Living.
What is the National Consumer Voice annual conference?
Schenk:
Tell me about the the annual conference you guys put on.
Smetanka:
Sure. So one of the ways that we work to educate and equip not only residents and family members, but also other advocates from around the country is through an annual conference, which we hold in the fall of every year.
This year, it’s going to be at the end of September 23rd through 26th, we’re going to be in San. In Francisco for the 1st time this year, but usually the 2 to 3 day conference where we bring together advocates from across the country policy experts, government officials, issue experts, people that.
Provide best practices and long term care issues, practitioners, direct care workers, attorneys. There’s a whole range of advocates that come together. We host a number of different programs so that we can provide training and resources and information, peer to peer learning. It’s a great opportunity for advocates to connect with each other and learn from each other in terms of skills that they can take back and implement in their communities.
Understand how CMS regulations monitor and influence long-term care facilities through our in-depth podcast discussion.
It’s also a great place for residents and families to connect with each other and to make their views known. And we’re really thrilled that every year we’ve been able to bring residents from the local area to our conference as special guests. We host an empowerment banquet, we encourage them to come, and they’re our guests while we’re there.
But one of the things that we do while we’re there is we host a special dialogue just for residents and federal officials from federal agencies and state agencies so that they can hear directly from residents about issues that are important to them and what their experiences are in their long term care facility.
And that has been a really powerful opportunity for residents to have their voices be heard and for federal officials to hear directly from the people. That are the recipients of the policies that they implement.
Discover the legal initiatives targeting elder abuse by visiting the Department of Justice’s Elder Justice Initiative.
Schenk:
Y’all have so much excellent and useful material on your website. If a family of a nursing home resident or the nursing home resident, him or herself looks at that information, uses it to better their own situation, but has questions that I hear that, that they might be able to call your office to try to understand better the materials or just ask a question. Is that something that’s available to the public?
Smetanka:
Absolutely. People can call our office or send us an email. We have an email address on our website. It’s info at the consumervoice. org and a staff person will respond and try to help them as best as possible with respect to whatever questions they have, maybe direct them to resources that might be useful for them or put them in touch with with resources in their community, such as an ombudsman program or someone else who might be able to help them directly.
So absolutely, we do field calls from residents and family members on a regular basis, almost on a daily basis, and we provide as much support as we can. As I mentioned earlier, we don’t provide direct care. We can’t really get involved in the direct advocacy. We just don’t with It’s with 10 people. We don’t quite have the capacity to do that.
Access a wide range of health-related research and updates at the National Institute on Aging.
How can the public help the National Consumer Voice?
Schenk:
But we do try to refer people out and here’s the kind of the vice versa that how can the public help you? How can the public out there that’s listening help your your advocacy and your organization?
Smetanka:
Absolutely. There’s a few ways that they can do that.
Number one is we are a membership organization and it really helps to be able to say that we’re representing as many voices as possible who are members and our membership rates are very reasonable. 40. For an individual and actually for residents, the membership is free. So we encourage people to become members.
And with that, they get access to all kinds of information from our organization as well as discounts in our store and deep discounts on our annual conference registration. So we hope that folks will join as members, residents and families. We would encourage to contact us for more information about joining our community.
Consumer Advisory Councils. We have one that is made up of residents or former residents of long term care facilities and one made up of family members where they come together on a periodic basis to talk about a variety of issues to connect with other residents and families from around the country and to provide input into the work that we do.
Listen to an overview of The National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care on our podcast.
Some of the things that residents and families that work with us have been able to do or be part of webinars policy briefings. As I mentioned, we’ve been able to connect them with federal policymakers, including the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and others. There are some great things that we’re able to do with this.
with those. And we also provide information for people about how to engage with their policymakers. We have advocacy information on our website. And we periodically put out action alerts or calls to action or share tools or resources for how people can engage with their policymaker in order to make their voice heard on a particular issue.
In fact, Just today, we sent out an action alert around an issue that needs immediate attention, and it needs consumers to pay attention to and to contact their legislators with respect to protecting the staffing rule that just went into effect. There’s efforts to repeal it and to stop its implementation, and we need consumers to pay attention to that.
And so we send out action alerts. That people can just either use and adapt to contact their member of Congress or frankly, even just click a button and it’ll send a letter for them. So we try to make it as easy as possible.
Gain insights into the role of the long-term care ombudsman and their impact on nursing home care through our podcast episodes on the role of the long-term care ombudsman and using the long-term care ombudsman for reporting problems.
Schenk:
And I’ll make sure that in our show notes, we have the website for how to become a member.
It’s so we can all contribute to your cause. Thank you so much, Lori. This is I really enjoy talking to you and I really appreciate the work that your team, the DECA super team is completing on a daily basis for our long term care residents.
Learn about the responsibilities and actions of the Georgia Long-Term Care Ombudsman and how they assist residents.
Smetanka:
Thanks so much.
It’s always great to talk to you as well. I appreciate your support and giving us the platform to raise visibility and look forward to continuing to connect with you, Rob. So thanks for having me.
Guest Info:
- Lori Smetanka LinkedIn
- theconsumervoice.org/
- Louriechance on X