Saturday, December 27, 2008

Protecting the Vulnerable, Versus Protecting Their Abusers

There has been a recent Bush Administration change in rules on nursing home inspections. These changes will make it harder for people to find out what happened to their loved ones who have accidents or are abused by nursing home employees. Under the new rules, state employees who inspect nursing homes are reclassified as federal employees, and are not allowed to provide "privileged information" or documents to the public without approval from the head of the centers for Medicaid and Medicaid!

The reason given by the head of HHS is that responding to requests "diverts employees from their federal survey, certification, and enforcement responsibilities." Baloney!!

I have written before about experiences I had as a Director of Human Services. I had a radio program, called Senior Saturday, which was broadcast on a local CBS station. Each Saturday I interviewed seniors whom my caseworkers had told me were interesting characters.

One Saturday I interviewed a 99-year-old woman who was telling me about coming to Colorado in a covered wagon, crossing over Wolf Creek Pass! A resident of the nursing home, whose bed was across the hall, came into the room to listen to the interview. The Director of Nursing roughly shoved him back into his room.

The following Monday I filed an official grievance with the state. My caseworkers followed up with a dozen additional grievances over the next few weeks. The nursing home lost its Medicare and Medicaid funding.

Hearings ensued, with lawyers in three-piece-suits from Philadelphia defending the corporation that owned the nursing home (the corporation owned a vending machine network in Pennslyvania). The corporation finally made a ton of changes to clean up the operation. after losing all their appeals, and regained their Medicaid and Medicare funding.

There are interesting sidelights to the story. After the clean up, my ex-wife became the director of the nursing home, and I later brought my own mother to live there, after she suffered a series of strokes, and kept crashing into things on her way to the golf course!

It sounds to me as though the high-priced guys in three-piece suits have successfully lobbied the Bush administration to protect the interests of their corporations. I don't believe it is good news for seniors, many of whom society has already forgotten.

1 comment:

Terri Wagner said...

When will enough people demand transparency from the government...whatever happened to wanting the best of care for our eldery and as you have pointed out many times our children. How a society treats its most vulnerable is the greatest measure of judgement to that society. We are NOT looking good here.