Wisconsin nursing home responsiveness requirements

A nursing home must report to the Department any allegation of client abuse, neglect, or misappropriation of client property by a person it employs or contracts with, on a department form, within 7 calendar days of when it knew or should have known of the misconduct.

The entity shall submit its report on a form provided by the department within 7 calendar days from the date the entity knew or should have known about the misconduct.

PARTIAL ANALOG ONLY -- Wisconsin requires every skilled care facility to retain a physician by written agreement as medical director to provide medical direction and coordination of medical care, but this section imposes NO duty of 24-hour physician availability for emergencies and no physician on-call requirement.

Every skilled care facility shall retain, pursuant to a written agreement, a physician to serve as medical director on a part-time or full-time basis as is appropriate for the needs of the residents and the facility. Medical direction and coordination of medical care in the facility shall be provided by the medical director.

The registered-nurse director of nursing must be on call at all times (or designate another RN to be on call) whenever no RN is on duty, and a skilled nursing facility must have at least one charge nurse on duty at all times, with RN charge-nurse coverage scaled to census (100+ residents requires an RN charge nurse at all times).

Being on call at all times, or designating another registered nurse to be on call, when no registered nurse is on duty in the facility

Every nursing home resident has a statutory right to private and unrestricted communications, expressly including reasonable access to a telephone for private communications.

Reasonable access to a telephone for private communications.

The nursing home must have a department-approved resident-and-staff call system letting each resident activate a call from resident rooms, toilet, bathing and activity areas, visible from the corridor with an audible sounder on staff non-response, a distinctive emergency signal from toilet/bath/shower areas, and it must be functioning at all times.

the nursing home shall have a department-approved resident and staff communication system comprised of components listed by an independent testing laboratory to permit each resident to activate the call from resident rooms, toilet area, bathing areas, and activity areas. Nurse calls shall be visible from corridor or access aisles within each resident living area and an audible sounder shall annunciate upon failure of staff response.

A facility must maintain a quality assessment and assurance committee -- the director of nursing, the medical director or a designated physician, and at least 3 other staff -- that meets at least quarterly to identify quality-of-care issues and must identify, develop and implement plans of action to correct identified quality deficiencies.

A facility shall maintain a quality assessment and assurance committee for the purpose of identifying and addressing quality of care issues.