Nursing home memories

Sam Huntington writes about a lousy nursing home facility and a lousy husband who dumped his wife there so he could live off her retirement savings with his mistress.

It brought back some memories. One of the things I am proudest of in my social work career. I was Director of Social Services in a county in western Colorado.

I had a radio program called Senior Saturday. I would interview some interesting senior about her life. One day I was interviewing a 90-something-year-old woman in the nursing home. An old man from across the hall wandered into the room while I was interviewing her. She was telling about coming over Wolf Creek Pass in a covered wagon, before there was a highway. The Director of Nursing was in the room listening to the interview. When the man wandered in to listen, she forcibly removed him from the room and pushed him across the hall into his room.

The following Monday I convened a meeting of the caseworkers and told them I wanted to document in writing to the state any abuses they saw at the nursing home, and that I would start the ball rolling with a report on what I saw on Saturday. We eventually filed thirteen official grievances with the state, which withheld funding for the nursing home pending the outcome of hearings on the grievances. The nursing home, which was owned by a vending machine outfit out of Philadelphia, brought in lawyers in three piece suits, and the hearings went on for weeks. Finally, the nursing home agreed in writing to make specific changes in their operations, and became a very decent facility.