Nursing home residents must be protected from harm

An 18-month study by the Senate Special Committee on Aging's has revealed a frightening pattern of sexual and physical abuse in the nation's nursing homes, where the crimes are all but ignored by home administrators. The investigation found that nursing homes rarely call police for attacks that would bring an instant response if they occurred elsewhere.
The nursing home industry has poured millions of dollars into federal and state political campaigns to ensure that industry voices will be heard -- and they have. The political watchdog organization Common Cause found that over the past decade the nursing home industry as a whole gave nearly $3.4 million to Democrats and Republicans.
But the frail voices of the abused elderly are rarely heard. Thomas A. Scully, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the agency will now instruct state enforcement agencies to immediately notify local law enforcement or state Medicaid fraud units, depending on the crime. That doesn't go far enough. Reporting crimes after the fact is a poor substitute from stopping them from happening in the first place.
Seniors at risk: Seniors in extended-care facilities who have no nearby family are particularly vulnerable. Just because most of the nation's nursing homes may be adequate is hardly reassurance to those who rely on nursing homes to take care of aging relatives. What about the rest?
Government figures show that from July through September 2000, nearly 26 percent of nursing homes were cited for violations that ranged from actual harm to residents to poor record keeping and failure to put into practice policies to prevent abuse. While investigators found that only about 2 percent of the cases involved actual harm to residents, considering that some 1.6 million Americans are cared for in 17,000 nursing homes, that still means at least 32,000 residents were harmed by those who are supposed to be caring for them.
One victim of her caregiver at a Sacramento, Calif., nursing home was so severely beaten that she died of her injuries. The staff member responsible for the assault pleaded no-contest and served a year in prison.
In an Evansville, Ind., rehabilitation center, a resident was knocked unconscious by another resident, but the home initially reported that she had fallen. The woman died a month later, and the home was fined only $39,520 by the government.
State and federal governments are too often swayed by the industry's plaintive cries about health care costs and labor shortages to respond more vigorously to the needs of vulnerable aged citizens.
It's time to take care of the elderly rather than taking care of the nursing home industry.