This just makes me sick.
nurses’ aids can always make anonymous complaints.
The children of the elderly bear responsibility for what happens to them, when they decide to dump them off at the nursing homes, without doing their due diligence.
Just part of the Medicaid/Medicare Death panels. Can cut costs if the old folks just die off through selective neglect.
Legal oversight becomes more necessary when management and personal responsibility have failed. Establishing and maintaining a workforce (nurses, aides and everyone else)whose members feel personal responsibility is part of the job of management. Establishing and maintaining proper management is the job of the owner of the facility.
“Fines seem to be the standard way of handling nursing home infractions. Is it time to adapt new laws for these violations?”
It depends. If the problems are caused by a poor financial situation due to insufficient income, fines will only aggravate the situation. If the fines are considered to be just a cost of doing business, levying fines won't help that much. The problem here is coming up with new laws that would actually help instead of adding to the problems.
“They trust that the nursing staffs and administrators have the patients well-being in mind, not the facilities bottom line.”
The bottom line is important, and maintaining a decent bottom line is necessary, but maximizing the bottom line should not be the point of the effort. Most every endeavor has business aspects, but not every endeavor is a business foremost. I believe one of the problems with much of the medical profession is that it is run as a business, not as a profession.
Several years ago our father was assigned to a skilled nursing home to recover from his heart attack. We were shocked that all the patients seemed to be drugged up. It was like a mental facility in the dining hall. The nursing facility, the hospital and the insurance company later claimed that the patients were *all* senile.
There shouldn’t be 100% senility in a skilled nursing home. We saw what kind of sedatives they were trying to give our dad. We were pretty sure that they were keeping the patients sedated so that they would be easier to care for while they were collecting money from the insurance companies.
We pulled our father out of there early the first night and took him home.
He recovered quickly at home, but said later he was scared for his life, that the nursing home was a “hell hole” and he wasn’t sure what would have happened if we had kept him there — they might have kept him there drugged up until he died in order to collect the insurance money.
Do your research on local nursing facilities early — on the Internet and in person — before you or a loved one is forced into one.
Does anyone know if there is extra insurance that people can buy that can be applied to upgrades in the quality of nursing homes when they are needed in the future?
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So guess what will be the remedy, more regulation. I know of a case of regulation gone amok nearly endangering the lives of all the patients at a hospice. The owners were hit with a bounty hunter audit and the hospice had all of its payments frozen. The owner freaked and nearly had to lay off her entire staff. Just think of that, a bunch of dying patients spending their last days in beds soiled with urine and stool and without pain meds. Fortunately, they somehow made it through and the hospice was fined $500 for some egregious transgression I suppose.
But it seems that these old and sick people are just at the end of the ‘complete lives system’ curve and deserve to be liquidated according the compassionate progressives.
I worked in nursing homes several of them not in direct patient care but maintenance. My wife was a CNA for 5 years before we met at work. Her patients were her babies, her grandmother, grandfather, she cared for. If she saw abuse she confronted the abuser and told her supervisor as well. She could have made better money in a clothing factory but liked her job wiping the poop up and all else that went with it.
There are more elderly in nursing homes for many reasons. When I was growing up {I'm in my mid 50's} elders often died of conditions that today people survive. People are living longer but with age many times comes serious medical issues. A patient today with treatable {treatable is not the same as curable many times} can live well over a decade with treatment but things like Chemo take a huge toll on the elderly. Dementia/Alzheimer's is another. It can hit in your 40's- your 100's. It hits when it hits. Yes for at least part of the disorder a secure facility is a wise move unless you have a mega family that can do 24/7 don't take your eyes off of them care. I've seen everything from cancer to patients in advanced STD and I don't mean AIDS.
I am also a caregiver of 26 years and I can speak from that point of view as well. I do nursing at home. I am my wife's caregiver including nurse. I learned it fast. Same wife BTW who was the CNA I now care for. She is a quad. I believe in family caring for family. I told my parents that for as long as I was able I would also be their caregiver.
Dad died at home last month. We did have hospice care but my mom in her late 70's myself, and another family member did the care actual. Hospice checked in a couple times a week. You have too so you can get the needed pain meds etc. Cancer is one bad bully. The last two weeks were emotionally hard the last three days of his life he could not swallow and was unresponsive.
I've seen a lot. I've nearly lost my wife several times just getting her to an ER in time. I did loose my first wife too a massive heart attack in her early 20's. This was different. This wasn't come visit an hour and go home then one day the home or hospital calls. This was being there with the person and it will be something that takes you time too deal with afterward when they pass. In the end you pray for GOD's mercy too take them. Think about this as it is what you face doing the care. I have no regrets but the caregiver has to understand the task and have the mental ability to cope for the patient {family members} sake and get the job done.
If a person thinks or feels they do not have the ability emotionally, physically, as well as being able to do care that even may bring them pain then yes a nursing home is a wise choice. I see no shame whatsoever in it. Do what you think is right for them and for you.
Used too be when people had a heart attack all the medical options they had was waiting on the next one and I remember that option was all my grandmother had when I was 6. I remember her oxygen tent in my aunts home.
Nursing Homes are supposed to have inspections and it's for a good reason. Good inspectors will not announce their arrival. As well most states dealing in Medicaid or Medicare do have an Inspector Generals office to answer too and usually an arm of that office inspects and investigates complaints etc as well. That is who you go too. An employee or family member can do it and not give their name.
BTW my wife caught her patients family member in abuse. The woman went into the patients room and poured cold water on her mother. Then she went too the nurse saying her mother was laying in urine and had been doing so for a long time because it was not warm. My wife had checked the patient about 10 minutes before when the family member was out of the room she was dry. So what busted the family member? Urine stains water doesn't.
Also there has been radical changes in the past decade in just what constitutes a nursing home. Assisted living facilities can often do what nursing homes did before. They can handle Dementia by locking the patient inside a secure unit. They are free to walk around etc but for their safety can not open the doors too leave the unit itself. They have a nurses and it is much more non clinical and relaxed for the patient. My sibling is in one. She gets better treatment there and is safer there for now.
Other assisted living where mental capacity is not a factor by physical capacity is the patients can come and go as they please anywhere themselves. The residence go there because they are fed, rooms cleaned, clothes washed, etc Family comes and goes as they please and for the resident it allows them something many cherish as long as they possibly can and that is retaining some of their independence. I have seen assisted living residents that a decade ago would have been stuck in a nursing home because they lacked ability too keep their home up because of issues such as being confined too a wheelchair.
Look at the reality of numbers also. Do the math. If a patient is lets say 80 how old are the patients kids? 62 maybe? Lots of difference in a 20-50 year old doing care giving than someone in their 60's being such full time. To beat it all I'm disabled myself. There may come a point we have to move to assisted living as well.
As for the race factoring in? Logical answer is many die younger from lack of early medical care or inherit diseases not normally hitting white patients. There is a difference in the life expectancy though I'm certain. But I knew plenty of black patients. Go look in a county ran NPO ran facility.