Long term care facilities across America to protect residents

Long term care facilities across America must protect their residents with sprinkler systems, to serve Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. Under a new regulation issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services facilities will have five years to comply with the new rule.

Approximately three million elderly and disabled Americans reside in the nation’s 16,000 nursing homes. All of them must have comprehensive sprinkler systems in place by 2013. To date, there has never been a multiple-fatality fire in a facility with a sprinkler system meeting these requirements.

“CMS is taking further action to protect the lives of our beneficiaries through a more comprehensive and effective approach to fire safety,” said Kerry Weems, acting administrator of CMS. “In the past, certain older facilities were exempt from having an automatic sprinkler system, but we now will hold all 16,000 nursing homes in the nation to this standard.”

CMS in March 2005 began requiring all long term care facilities that did not have sprinklers to install battery-operated smoke alarms in all patient rooms and public areas. Although fatal fires in nursing homes are rare, the Government Accountability Office estimated that automatic sprinkler systems decrease the chance of fire-related deaths by 82 percent.

CMS has already taken many actions to increase resident safety over the past several years, including stepped-up frequency in the number of fire safety inspections performed.

The agency, on its Nursing Home Compare Web site, publishes the number of fire safety violations, for every long term care facility in the country. It also includes which nursing homes have sprinkler systems.

Under previous CMS regulations, newly constructed and rehabilitated nursing homes must be equipped with sprinkler systems. Prior to today’s rule, existing homes were not required to have such systems, by the federal government.

CMS follows the fire safety guidelines developed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). All new sprinkler systems installed, as a result of this rule, must meet NFPA technical specifications. To comply with the new rule, nursing homes must have sprinkler coverage in all areas such as:

• resident rooms
• kitchen, dining and activity areas
• corridors
• attics
• canopies
• overhangs
• offices
• waiting areas
• closets
• storage areas for trash and linen
• maintenance areas

“This is an important new rule for protecting the health and safety of persons living in long term care facilities. These people are, by definition, some of the most vulnerable among us,” Weems said. “Fire safety experts believe automatic sprinkler systems are the most effective fire protection step facilities can take."