The state of PA is looking at regulating assisted living facilities and other personal care homes.

The Rendell administration is following up a rocky, undermanned overhaul of personal care home regulations with plans to devise a new long-term care category.

Representatives of the Governor’s Office of Health Care Reform have invited long-term care industry and advocacy groups to a meeting tomorrow in Harrisburg to unveil proposed legislation.

The proposal is designed to divert aging, increasingly frail individuals away from nursing homes by keeping them in more homelike assisted-living settings. A new government funding stream would be created for such care, funneling money to facilities able to provide more resident amenities and medical care than what most personal care homes offer.

In essence, the state would be giving a subset of the existing 1,600 personal care homes a chance to be part of a new licensing category, with higher standards than what they’ve had but less stringent requirements than those faced by the 700-plus nursing homes in the state.

Although many facilities in the state already market themselves as “assisted living” centers, offering group meals and an array of nonmedical services to support older adults, Pennsylvania, unlike most states, lacks any assisted-living definitions, regulations or funding.