by Shaanth Nanguneri, Oregon Capital Chronicle
June 23, 2025
Patients wandering the halls. Waste and fecal matter on the floor. Exit doors left open without any employees on duty for supervision.
Stories like these took center stage in the Oregon Senate on Monday, when lawmakers overwhelmingly passed Senate Bill 739, a bill that aims to enact stricter oversight for Oregon’s long-term and memory care facilities. The measure would require facilities to notify residents’ contacts when a site is found to have violated state health policies on neglect and abuse or if a location is placed on an oversight watchlist by the state.
The legislation gained urgency in the wake of multiple stories from patients and families with experiences of neglect that ultimately turned fatal for Oregonians living in assisted care facilities.
In one December 2023 case, an 83-year old woman escaped the Sandy-based Mount Hood Senior Living, only to be found dead the next day. Another revolves around a Corvallis-area senior facility where there have been over 50 complaints of abuse in the past two years.
“These people can’t wait any longer. We need to have our inspectors out there,” Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, D-Corvallis, told her colleagues. “We need them to be enforcing, and we need that education and transparency.”
The bill would also require the Oregon Department of Human Services and Oregon Health Authority to begin investigations within 24 hours for complaints against facilities that allege death resulting from neglect or abuse.
An investigator would have to assess whether a site had sufficient staff, and new applications for licenses must be coupled with an inspection visit to a site within 90 and 120 days of issuing a license.
Waning opposition
The bill cleared the Senate with only one vote in opposition, from Sen. Noah Robinson, R-Cave Junction, who did not speak about his decision. Robinson votes against most bills that come before him.
Two senators who opposed the bill in the Senate Committee on Human Services in April, Todd Nash, R-Enterprise, and Diane Linthicum, R-Beatty, both voted in favor of the legislation on Monday.
But the Portland-based Oregon Health Care Association, which represents over 1,000 organizations and most long-term care providers in the state, warned in a March letter that the bill’s standards “are not reasonable, and they do not contemplate the realities and nuances of current regulations.”
The group in particular took issue with a proposed amendment removing the option for a management company to assist in the first six months of the operation of a center if a new licensee or owner lacks prior operating experience. The amendment was not adopted.
“The policy question at hand is what the appropriate threshold is for when residents should be proactively notified about regulatory actions against a facility and the manner in which those notifications should occur,” wrote Libby Batlan, the association’s senior vice president of government relations, in March.
The Senate-approved legislation appears to have struck a balance that appeases some of critics’ concerns, with Gelser Blouin thanking the group on Monday for providing input and working with the bill’s advocates.
Sen. Deb Patterson, D-Salem, said Monday that stories of neglect within such facilities are common, pointing to when she visited a patient who needed to go to the bathroom at a site she visited. Patterson couldn’t find any staff to help.
“They are isolated incidents, but they’re not that isolated,” she said of the cases the bill’s supporters have shared. “And this bill is a great way to prevent more tragedies that I’ve seen myself far too often.”
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