QUINCY, ILL. -- A bill aimed at stepping up safety in Illinois nursing homes has made its way to Governor Pat Quinn's desk.

Senate bill 326 passed the House unanimously last week.

KHQA's Jarod Wells found out why lawmakers supported it, what this legislation will do, and what a local nursing home administrator has to say about it.

Illinois Representative Jil Tracy (R - 93rd Dist) said, "In some nursing homes in the north part of the state, there was crisis. People were getting hurt or felt like the elderly were being mistreated."

Those reports came from the Chicago Tribune citing assaults, rapes and murders in Illinois nursing homes.

Michael Duffy is the administrator of the Good Samaritan Home in Quincy. He says that could have been caused by mixing geriatric residents with convicted felons, the mentally ill and young residents, some in their 20s.

Duffy said, "As a result of that, you had incidents and issues and pretty serious problems that occured because they were mixing populations."

The Nursing Home Safety bill proposes background checks on residents and more staff to make nursing homes safer.

Duffy said, "There are certain aspects of this legislation that are okay, that are good. But there are other aspects of the legislation that remain to be seen."

Here are some things that concern Duffy and other nursing homes that already take safety precautions: More surveyors of nursing homes, and stiffer fines for violations.

Duffy said, "My worry is, you may have fines, and I guess underneath that I'm concerned that, is this a mechanism for the state to make more money? For a poor performing facility, that may be a way of getting them out of business, but then for a facility that is doing a good job, again, it increases the costs of doing business."

It's obvious there are chronic poor performing nursing homes in the state, is this legislation the answer?

Duffy said, "It's a mixed bag. It think there are some things that are beneficial for long term care, beneficial for protecting seniors, that I think we all can agree upon, but then there's some things that would remain to be seen how beneficial."

Representative Jil Tracy says this bill still is a work in progress.

Tracy said, "Sometimes we react to specific abuses that maybe already were addressed. So this was a revisiting to see what was in place, who was going to administer, who was going to check."

Representative Jil Tracy told Jarod lawmakers still have to find a way to pay for all the extra oversight.

Michael Duffy with Good Samaritan Home in Quincy says any new regulations create more work and expense for nursing homes.

But the main goal is to care for and protect seniors, so he and his staff will comply with whatever the legislature decides.