State Sen. James Skoufis, D-Newburgh, wants to make it easier for those placing a loved one into a residential health care facility to find information about complaints, citations and enforcement actions against the facility.

Skoufis recently introduced S.3185 in the state Senate to require residential health care facilities to provide residents and their families with a separate document, as part of an intake application, that includes information on how complaints, citations, inspections, enforcement actions, and penalties taken against the facility can be found.

The legislation was written after August 2020 hearings to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on residential health care facilities. Skoufis wrote in his legislative justification that several people testified they didn’t know that the state Health Department keeps such data on its website.

“Testimony at the hearings revealed that many residents and their family members are unaware that the Department of Health maintains information on compliance of residential health care facilities,” Skoufis wrote. “This legislation directs the Commissioner of Health to require residential health care facilities to provide residents and their families with a separate document, as part of an intake application, advising where online to locate a list of any violations the facility has received by the Department of Health as well as the nursing home compare website maintained by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.”