Info about Nursing Homes
Nursing Home Abuse
According to research about ninety percent of the nursing homes all over the country have received citations for violations of federal safety and health standards. Even more surprising is the fact that ninety-four percent of all nursing homes that are privately owned have received citations for this kind of violations. It is obvious that neglect and abuse of nursing home patients is epidemic in proportion. Everyone that has a loved one in a nursing home needs to understand this problem.
The Nursing Home Reform Law, passed in 1987, guarantees the rights of residents in a nursing home. It requires all nursing homes to promote as well as protect the rights of every nursing home resident. According to the statistics of nursing home cases, they are obviously not holding to the standards.
It is estimated by the National Center on Elder Abuse that a minimum of one in twenty patients in nursing homes has been neglected or abused, or both. However, it states that the actual numbers are probably higher. In the national study, fifty seven percent of nuring assistants admitted that they had witnessed or even participated in negligent and abusive acts. The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed between the years of 1999 to 2002 about fourteen thousand deaths in nursing homes were the result of abuse or neglect.
According to the detailed report of the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services over one and a half million people live in fifteen thousand nursing homes in the nation. Facilities have to meet federal safety and health standards in order to receive funds from Medicaid or Medicare. Over two thirds of the residents in nursing homes are covered by one of these programs. This seventy-five billion dollars a year comes from taxpayers.
The report from the inspectior general stated last year that 37,150 complaints were filed over poor conditions of the facility. Only thirty-nine percent of those compaints were substantiated, but in at least twenty percent of those there was neglect or abuse involved. The report said that seventeen percent of the nursing homes had problems that could immediately cause harm to patients or put them in immediate jeopardy.
Approximately two thirds of the nursing homes nationwide are owned by companies who are trying to make a profit. Twenty-seven percent of them are owned by non profit businesses. The government own and operate about six percent of them. Eighty-eight percent of the non profit organizations received citations for violations, and ninety-one percent of the government institutions were given citations. The nursing homes that are run for a profit had an average of 7.6 violtations for every facility, non profit homes averaged 5.7 violations, and the governmental institutions had 6.3 violations.
If you want to protect your loved one who lives in a nursing home, you need to know what is considered abuse and how to recognize it. Neglect is the most common kind of abuse in nursing homes. The main reason for this is that they are understaffed. Depression, sore joints, and bed sores are all signs of neglect. It is also abuse for a patient to be over medicated or sedated needlessly. Hallmark signs of abuse and neglect include the odor from feces or urine and personal hygiene that is poor. If a patient has unexplained weight loss that can also be a signal of abuse.