Most families turn to nursing homes or hospice to give the elderly care and attention they need, but a recent study put out Monday says one of every 700 United States nursing homes have been cited for some form of abuse abuse.
They found examples of residents being punched, choked or kicked by staff members or other residents. It is a shocking reality for thousands of older Americans, a trend that was first reported last year with the story of Helen Love. She was attacked by a certified nurse's assistant at a facility, who was angered she'd soiled herself.
Helen Love died days after her interview. Her assailant got a year in county jail and a inquiry found that other employees at the same facility had been convicted for abuse, which ought to have barred them from working in a nursing home or with the elderly.
283 nursing homes were cited for abuse violations, according to a review of state inspection records. These homes were cited for 9,000 abuse violations from January 2009 to January 2012.
The nursing home industry agrees on the necessity for stiffer background checks, but disagrees abuse is widespread.
"The congressman himself said the great majority of long-term care in our nation is excellent.
There are people every day that are working very hard to provide that care," said Charles H. Roadman II, president of the American Health Care Association (AHCA), a nursing home trade group that represents 12,000 nonprofit and for-profit centers and homes for the elderly and disabled.
Waxman is also introducing a plan that would need criminal background checks on nursing home staff and impose tougher standards on homes with violations.
Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees spending and other operations, said Congress ought to re-establish an abolished federal law that boosts nursing home spending. The Boren amendment would guarantee that the nation's 17,000 homes do a better job of screening, training and counseling their staff. Roughly 1.5 million seniors live in nursing homes.
"Recruiting, training and keeping frontline nursing staff are among the most important things they can do to make definite our patients continue to get quality expert nursing care," said Roadman.
The AHCA supports a federal criminal background check process for potential employees.
But middle operators said abuse is not the norm in nursing homes and lots of staff members deserve praise.
"Our patients are like relatives, and incidents like those described here today are very rare," said Sharon Sellers, vice president of operations at Washington Home, with a 200-bed middle in the District of Columbia.
Bruce Rosenthal, spokesman for the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, said Congress ought to focus on the troubled centers, than generate cumbersome standards for all.
"We strongly think nursing homes that exhibit consistently poor performance ought to either clean up their act or be put out of business," said Rosenthal, whose group represents 5,600 not-for-profit homes and centers.
The reported abuses were physical, sexual and verbal.
Over two times as many nursing homes were cited for abuse in 2010 than in 2009.
In 2009 fifty nine percent of all nursing homes were cited for an abuse violation in the work of their annual inspections; in 2010, 16 percent of nursing homes were cited.
The document found that in 1,507 nursing homes - about one in ten - abuse citations were made in serious incidents that put residents at great risk of harm, injured them or killed them.
"It would have been intolerable if they had found a hundred cases of abuse; it is unconscionable that they have found thousands on thousands," Waxman said.
For example, a resident was killed when another resident with a history of abusive behavior picked her up and slammed her in to a wall. In another case, a resident's nose was broken by an attendant who hit her. An attendant raped another resident in her room.
It was not clear how so many elders were abused. In some cases an abuse quotation referred to a single victim; in others a single case affected several residents.
Investigators said lots of violations are neither detected nor reported, leading officials to think the issue is underestimated.
We also found, one out of every 225 homes was cited for over abuse violation in the two-year period; 301 homes were cited for or more abuse violations and 196 nursing homes were cited for six or more abuse violations.
Over 39 percent or 3,700 abuse violations were only reported after formal complaints came from residents, their families or community advocates.
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