Wandering a concern at adult homes
Times Record-Herald had an article about a resident who wandered away from an adult home and froze to death. These kinds of incidents are preventable if the home has well-trained and competent number of staff members supervising the residents. A death from wandering is a sure sign that understaffing, inadequate training, and a lack of supervision exists in that nursing home.
The article mentions that Karen Preston walked away from the Roscoe Manor Adult Home. She stumbled into the woods about a mile away. She fell repeatedly. She walked in circles. She curled up under a pine tree. And that's where police found her frozen body two days later - her socks next to her body, no shoes on her feet. A medical examiner ruled that she died of hypothermia.
Karen Preston was 54 years old and suffered from severe schizophrenia. She had lived in Roscoe Manor because she needed help with daily activities and supervion that an adult home is supposed to provide.
Preston's tragic death underscores the deplorable conditions at many nursing homes. The Times Record-Herald reviewed inspections at 22 licensed adult homes in Ulster, Sullivan and Orange counties from 2001-07 and turned up 846 violations deemed to directly affect the safety or well-being of residents - with two-thirds of those citations recorded at the seven adult homes operated in Sullivan County.
A year after Preston disappeared, another Roscoe Manor resident, Ella Maye, walked away from the home. Maye, 78, had dementia and heart disease. State police believe she suffered a fatal heart arrhythmia while walking on Rockland Road early on Feb. 23. They believe she was trying to crawl back to Roscoe Manor when she collapsed on a neighbor's front lawn and died.
The adult home was supposed to do hourly bed checks, but Roscoe Manor owner Charles Benson said at the time that an employee had failed to do so. No one noticed Ella Maye was missing.
Adult home inspection reports and history documented by state agencies make it clear: Residents of some Hudson Valley adult homes are at a significant risk of illness, injury or even death due to carelessness or negligence on the part of the homes' operators and staff.
Despite reforms over the past few years, state oversight has been ineffective in regulating these homes, which house a vulnerable population of the elderly, infirm and mentally ill. And anyone can end up in an adult home. All it takes is a medical crisis that renders someone unable to live on their own.
State documents paint a disturbing picture of homes where residents are left to sit in soiled clothing, are subjected to physically or verbally abusive staffers and repeated instances of mismanaged medications.
