South Carolina Nursing Home Lawyer & Attorney : Poliakoff & Associates Law Firm : Elderly Care, Senior Care

Here is a link to the recent GAO Report that shows a lack of investigation into nursing home neglect and abuse.  The NY Times ran a great article on this report.  Below are some excerpts from that article.

Nursing home inspectors routinely overlook or minimize problems that pose a serious, immediate threat to patients, Congressional investigators say in a new report.   In the report, the investigators from the Government Accountability Office, say they have found widespread “understatement of deficiencies,” including malnutrition, severe bedsores, overuse of prescription medications and abuse of nursing home residents.

The accountability office found that state employees had missed at least one serious deficiency in 15 percent of the inspections checked by federal officials. In nine states, inspectors missed serious problems in more than 25 percent of the surveys analyzed from 2002 to 2007.

The nine states most likely to miss serious deficiencies were Alabama, Arizona, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming, the report said.

“Poor quality of care — worsening pressure sores or untreated weight loss — in a small but unacceptably high number of nursing homes continues to harm residents or place them in immediate jeopardy, that is, at risk of death or serious injury,” the report said.   Nursing homes must meet federal standards as a condition of participating in Medicaid and Medicare.

Lewis Morris, chief counsel to the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, said he had often been frustrated in trying to identify the owners of nursing homes that provided substandard care.  “We have found nursing home residents who were grossly dehydrated or malnourished,” Mr. Morris said. “We’ve found patients with maggot infestations in wounds and dead flesh. We’ve found residents with broken bones that went unmended.”

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Washington Post has a great article by Marie-Therese Connolly about demographics and elderly abuse.  Ms. Connolly worked at the DOJ and has years of experience with the nursing home industry.  Below are some excerpts.

As though declining health, impending mortality and other challenges weren't hard enough, too often old age is also plagued by abuse, neglect and exploitation.

Science has extended our lives dramatically: In 1900, Americans' average life expectancy was 47. By 2000, it was 77, and it's still rising.  Estimates of the prevalence of elder abuse vary wildly, but by some reports there could be up to 5 million cases a year, with 84 percent going unreported. All other factors being equal, victims of even relatively minor mistreatment are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who are not victimized.

Furthermore, our nation is in the midst of three seismic demographic shifts that will put seniors at even greater risk for mistreatment. Older people are living longer, until they're frailer and more vulnerable. They are increasingly alone in old age, given that families are smaller and more geographically and emotionally dispersed. And the pool of potential caregivers is aging and shrinking. We need 30,000 geriatricians: We have only 9,000.

Neglect may sound more benign than abuse, but it usually lasts longer, is harder to prove and prosecute, and can be just as lethal.   Thirty percent of seriously ill elders surveyed have told researchers that they would rather die than go to a nursing home.  But while neglect of one person is tragic, systemic neglect by a facility or chain housing numerous residents can be catastrophic.

Facility owners may extract millions in profits, leaving insufficient funds to care for residents. Insulated by corporate structure, casting blame on facility staff, they are rarely held accountable.  But the news about staffing, the most critical factor in the quality of long-term care, is bleak: A government study in 2002 concluded that more than half of the nation's nursing homes are understaffed at levels that harm residents. Nursing homes receive $80 billion from Medicare and Medicaid annually to care for 1.5 million residents.  Yet not a single federal employee works on elder abuse issues full-time.

Marie-Therese Connolly, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is former coordinator of the Department of Justice's Elder Justice and Nursing Home Initiative.

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