HARTFORD, Conn. — Following the death of Joyce Grayson, a traveling home healthcare nurse found dead in a patient’s home in October 2023, state lawmakers vowed to require safety precautions and risk assessment in the industry.
“The home health worker’s workplace is a home of a patient and that's a fastest growing segment of people because we want people to age at home. We want people to be able to get treatment at home,” said State Sen. Saud Anwar.
Lawmakers said safety for these medical professionals are top priority.
“When a person even enters the home, they have enough information to be able to make sure that they need any other safety communications, and they also want to make sure that they're not alone,” said Anwar.
RELATED: A nurse's fatal last visit to patient's home renews calls for better safety measures
Anwar said at-home health care workers should know the situation they are going into “If there's a high-risk situation," but that "in order to get that data, it takes a little bit of time and it takes a little bit of effort."
The well-intended Senate Bill One created some unintended consequences that had lawmakers making some last-minute changes.
Connecticut Hospice was the first hospice facility in the United States and the first in the world to provide at-home palliative care. Barbara Pearce, the interim CEO of Connecticut Hospice, raised concerns that the bill would have resulted in people not getting at home hospice care.
Pearce said it would have them required them to conduct lengthy screenings like “…background checks on both patients and their families, including criminal records, possession of firearms, drug and substance abuse, and all kinds of things, including the statistics of crime in their neighborhood."
"That would have been an insurmountable barrier for people to get hospice care during a time of day or week when you couldn't do that background check,” said Pearce.
Her concerns included that it would result in possible discrimination of hospice care and would delay starting hospice care that Medicare requires within 48 hours of getting a request, costing time that many hospice patients don’t have.
“At the end of 2020 we had 300 people die within three days, 200 people within two days, and 100 people within one day of entering home hospice care, meaning that few if any of those patients would be able to be served,” said Pearce.
RELATED: 'Angel on Earth' | Nurses from across Connecticut remember life of Joyce Grayson at State Capitol
After concerns were raised, state lawmakers changed their approach and chose to exclude hospice workers from the bill for now. Anwar said lawmakers plan to make a new tailored bill in the future to ensure safety.
“We will have a plan of action to see what can be done to reduce the risk for hospice care workers to because they are also healthcare workers and home health workers and they are in some very stressful environment. We want to make sure they're safe to,” said Anwar.
Lawmakers are racing against the clock as the 2024 legislative session is set to adjourn on May 8, nearly three weeks away.
Jake Garcia is a multimedia journalist for FOX61 News. He can be reached at jgarcia@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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