A new state commission, known as the Assisted Living Facilities Workgroup, tasked to improve Maryland’s smaller assisted living communities, began meeting this week. The 17 member commission is focused on ways to improve the quality of care, especially for facilities with fewer than 10 beds which have residents with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. It was created after the state legislature passed a bill to standardize the way health care quality is measured.

A bipartisan group of Maryland lawmakers were concerned that there was no standardized way of measuring the quality of care at the small, assisted living facilities.

But standardized metrics aren’t all the commission will explore across more than 1,200 assisted living facilities with fewer than 10 patient beds.

“We are to identify areas where quality can be improved, we should examine the entry into an exit from the market for assisted living programs,” said Stacy Howes, chief of long term quality care initiatives at the Maryland Health Care Commission, during the group’s first meeting on Oct. 31. “And then of course, we need to analyze how staffing resources could possibly be better utilized.”

The commission will explore the feasibility of creating an emergency reporting system within the facilities that will also protect patients’ identities.

Right now, the state’s older population is concentrated in Baltimore, Montgomery, Anne Arundel and Prince George’s Counties, as well as the city of Baltimore, according to the state. However, that is expected to change in the coming years as the state will see older population increases in Carroll, Cecil, Charles, Frederick, Howard and St. Mary’s Counties, officials said.

The commission is considering several strategies already in place in other states to standardize care assessment and possibilities for state oversight.

The commission will deliver its study and recommendations to the state legislature by October 2023.