| October 17, 2002
NHAAG: Wake Up America!
By Bee Becker
Two new investigative reports
have been released in the last 30 days:
1) The New
Math of Old Age
Why the
nursing home industry's cries of poverty don't add up
2) Thousands
Are Being Killed in Nursing Homes Each Year
More Deaths
Nationally are Called Homicides Without Changes, Suffering is Likely to
Continue
(1)
The New Math of Old Age
Why the nursing home
industry's cries of poverty don't add up
On September 30, 2002, U.S.
News & World Report's long-awaited Investigative Report by Christopher
Schmitt hit the news stands.
It is probably one of the
most in-depth looks inside the financing of the nursing home industry to
date. It's not news to those of us who fight for residents' rights.
Excerpts from the article:
"Although public funding
has effectively made nursing home care a full-blown government program,
the money comes with no guarantees of quality."
"There is no strong evidence,
as the industry claims, that inadequate federal payments for care of the
elderly poor are dragging down profits. Likewise, there is no evidence
that patients are markedly sicker today. The nursing home industry
is profitable and growing, with operators spinning a far brighter tale
for Wall Street than for Capitol Hill. Many nursing homes are earning
exceptionally healthy profit margins, often 20 and 30 percent. A
fifth of the nursing homes examined in the magazine survey spent 20 percent
or more of patient revenue on administrative costs."
Even Tom Scully, Administrator
for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), "agreed that the
industry's finances are not nearly as dire as many industry executives
say."
See the series (click
on titles to view article; requires Adobe
Acrobat):
To send a letter to the editor
of U.S. News & World Report to comment on this series: letters@usnews.com
(2)
Thousands Are Being Killed
in Nursing Homes Each
Year
More Deaths Nationally
are Called Homicides Without Changes, Suffering is Likely to Continue
On Sunday, October 12, 2002,
Andrew Schneider and Phil O'Connor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch released
the first of a series on some of the facets of our broken system of nursing
home care throughout the nation.
Unfortunately, when Phil
O'Connor contacted me, I had another tragic example for his publication.
A local victim's family (earlier news releases on Safetyforum NHAAG announced
the homicide by dehydration ruling of an 80-year-old nursing home resident
in January 2002, here in my home town). Ironically, this was the
same facility in which my mother-in-law's homicide occurred. The
two accused nurses were indicted August 2002 in this death and formally
charged with felony neglect. However, the Indiana Department of Health
only imposed a $2,500 fine for this dehydration homicide. Both workers
are scheduled to appear in court again Oct. 28.
This refers to the Mary Mynatt
case, which was published in this series, as well as interviews with the
Vanderburgh County (IN) coroner's office, who has taken an active role
in our community in seriously considering the deaths of elderly who reside
in nursing homes and in further training healthcare workers.
I am grateful to Angie Mynatt,
granddaughter of the victim, for her willingness to come forward and tell
her story in this series.
The articles covered in this
series so far are as follows (click on titles to view article):
To read or post comments
on the Post-Dispatch Forum, go to http://forums.stltoday.com/viewforum.php?f=6
and register (free) in order to be able to post your comments. The
Forum title for this series is "Sticky: Nursing Homes."
Or, you can send your comments
to Andrew Schneider at aschneider@post-dispatch.com
and/or Phil O'Connor at poconnor@post-dispatch.com.
==========
Our deepest thanks to Chris
Schmitt and U.S. News & World Report for spending countless hours investigating
and for having the courage to shine a light on the financial issues.
Thanks to Andy Schneider
and Phil O'Connor and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for their tireless efforts
on such a comprehensive report.
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