Investigation into Ohio nursing homes
Ohio's Newsnet5.com had an article about their investigation into Ohio nursing homes. Working with their partners at Scripps Howard News Service, NewsChannel5 spent three months researching care homes. NewsChannel5 found poor ratings for a number of Cleveland-area nursing homes. In fact, a quarter of the facilities in Cuyahoga County rated just one star on Medicare's five-star scale. Five other ManorCare properties in the area garnered just one star.
"There should be two kinds of nursing homes the excellent and non existent," said Larry Minnix, chief executive officer of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging.
Long-term care ombudsman, Gerald Kasunic, said, "If you smell urine or feces, or what I call the chemical hidden smell, something that may be a serious chemical odor, those are kind of bad signs."
According the SHNS and WEWS study of death records maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 19,000 people died in area nursing homes in 2005 and 2006. Of those deaths, 651 people died of accidents, skin infections or other potentially avoidable causes.
