Reading Ambulance Driver's blog today brought back some memories. In the early 1970s I was Director of Social Services in two counties in southwest Colorado, La Plata and San Juan. La Plata is where Durango is located, and also the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. San Juan is where Silverton is located. Together they provide some of the most majestic and beautiful scenery in the United States.
This was just after Watergate. I was impressed with what the media had uncovered, so I made a promise to myself to run the departments as openly as possible. Each week I met with two radio station newspeople, a televison station newsperson, and reporters from two newspapers.
The local CBS-affiliated radio station asked me to do a radio program. I called it "Senior Saturday." Each week I interviewed a senior citizen, about whom my caseworkers had told me something interesting about their life.
One Saturday I was interviewing a remarkable 99-year-old woman who had come over Wolf Creek Pass in a covered wagon to settle in the Durango area. The old man across the hall walked into her room at the nursing home so he could hear the interview. The very tall and husky woman who was the director of nursing, told him to go back to his room. He did not want to, so she pushed him across the hall in a way that I thought was abusive.
The following Monday I filed an abuse report with the state, and met with my caseworkers who had patients in that nursing home, whom the taxpayers were paying for through our department. The caseworkers followed up with ten more specific grievances. The state investigated and decided to pull their Medicaid funding, which was millions of dollars.
Did I stir up a hornets nest? Oh, yes! The local medical society wanted me fired. Many doctors were making lots of money drugging these patients into submission. I learned that the corporation that owned the nursing home mainly operated vending machines in Pennsylvania, and had Mafia ties! Hearings went on for many months. Lawyers in three-piece suits descended on our little town.
The nursing home was cleaned up. Someone finally decided it would be cheaper to just make it a good facility than to pay the suits month after month. I brought my own mother there after she suffered a series of strokes in Iowa. They gave her good care!
2 comments:
You did good.
Good for you! The Wisconsin State Journal recently did a series on elderly abuse and the silence that goes with it; whether in or out of a nursing/care home. It was so touching, horrifying and a good reminder of how we need to speak up for our elderly, children and others who cannot speak for themselves.
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