Long-Term Care Ombudsman

The General Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report on the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP), sharing findings from interviews with five selected state LTC Ombudsman Programs, the Administration for Community Living (ACL), and various stakeholders.

The GAO reviewers also looked at ombudsman data from the National Ombudsman Reporting System for fiscal years 2019 – 2022.

The report found that LTCOPs served more than 3 million residents of 76,000 LTC facilities in FY2022, and provided a range of services including resolving complaints and advocating for improvements to the LTC system.

LTCOP representatives and stakeholders interviewed described challenges that make it difficult for state LTCOPs to provide the full extent of services to residents, including increasingly complex cases, increasing numbers of facilities, and limitations in resources, such as staffing and funding.