It’s no secret that skilled care is one of the most heavily-regulated businesses in America. Given its customers and the services provided, that should not be too surprising.
But when you have more rules and requirements to deal with than any field this side of nuclear energy, the last thing you want to see is more of them.
That helps explain why the people in this field cringe a bit when a fellow operator gets in trouble for misdeeds, or even alleged misdeeds. After all, those are the kinds of developments that just might lead to even more oversight. But not all such threats come from within the family, so to speak.
For it’s looking increasingly like one of the nation’s largest firms could inadvertently cause more rules to come your way. That company is Facebook. You know, the $138 billion juggernaut with 700 million monthly users? To say the company has been accused of engaging in questionable behavior is to put things very, very mildly.
After all, this is the firm whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied that Russians were using his platform to interfere with the 2016 elections. Zuckerberg’s message to lawmakers, regulators and anyone who asked was that there was nothing significant going on, and besides, those few pesky troublemakers would be dealt with.
We later learned that Cambridge Analytica was misusing Facebook data for a similar purpose. Again, a small problem, but one that would certainly be fixed, Zuckerberg insisted.
Then last week came a damning investigation by the New York Times. It re-aired the usual dirty laundry, and added that the firm had hired a PR firm called Definers Public Affairs to circulate negative stories about critics.
America’s corporate history is full of firms that grew quickly, amassed amazing clout and chose to bury critics rather than face up to the problems they pointed out. Railroads companies, meat packers, oil companies and car makers come to mind. Now we can add Facebook — and perhaps other social media companies — to the list.
As this is being written, bills are being drafted in Washington to hold Facebook and other social media firms more accountable.
There’s also a good chance that the proposed legislation will be written broadly enough to encompass other data-dependent sectors. That, my friends, could very well include skilled care.
For whether you realize it or not, you are amassing tons of information about the people you serve. Going forward, there just might be more restrictions about how that intelligence can be obtained, used, stored — and even monetized.
In case you don’t already have enough to worry about.
John O’Connor is McKnight’s Editorial Director.
