ILLINOIS CITIZENS FOR BETTER CARE is the Illinois nursing home residents' advocacy and service organization. Since 1978, ICBC has worked to improve the care and quality of the life of Illinois nursing home residents.
ICBC's primary focus is helping individual residents, families and resident and family organizations. Every year we help hundreds of families choose a nursing home, shorten nursing home stays or avoid nursing home placement altogether by helping them find alternative care, improve poor or abusive nursing home care, and cope with Medicaid and Medicare. Our data base helps families make an informed choice by giving them information about services various nursing homes provide, their violation histories, and the experiences our members have had with them. We charge nothing for any of our services, and get no government grants to support our work.
ICBC also works as an advocate for nursing home residents with Congress, the Illinois legislature and various government agencies. We worked with Congressional staff to help prepare recent reports on the quality of Chicago-area nursing homes, and with the Chicago Tribune on its series about the care of chronically mentally ill persons in Illinois nursing homes.
Among our legislative successes:
- a Chicago ordinance that took effect in 2002, requiring nursing homes housing approximately 1600 people to become air-conditioned
- the strongest state law in the United States restricting the use of physical restraints and psychotropic drugs on nursing home residents
- a gubernatorial veto of a bill that would have allowed the Illinois Department of Public Health to investigate nursing home complaints without visiting the nursing home
- an Illinois law limiting the right of nursing homes to evict residents when their savings run out and they go on Medicaid
- creation of a nursing home residents' rights statement, now in 6 languages, distributed to all Illinois nursing home residents and their families
- protection for residents in the Illinois law regulating "assisted living"
- the first state funding of the Illinois nursing home residents ombudsman (advocate) program
ICBC is a membership organization.