BEWARE OF OUR SUPERMARKETS: ABUSE AT THE NURSING HOMES/CENTERS

I have been completing research on a variety of nursing home and rehabilitation centers that were under investigation and scrutiny regarding continued neglect of their patients. What inspired me to do this research was a former client who preferred to remain anonymous, let us just name her Socorro, who spent seven months in two Nursing Homes or Rehabilitation Centers.

 She told me she would stay hours on her wheelchair, in urine & feces, and end up with boils in & around her butt and front area, which was highly painful. She told me, patients with severe dementia, wonder around the facility in the middle of the night, disturbing, and harassing other patients. She felt that the facility was under staff ratio, with neglectful, rude, and very unkind staff members, many not professionally trained.  Imagine how many other patients, elders and the disabled, are experiencing this humiliation?

Neglect and abuse go hand in hand, a partnership in human violations, especially against patients diagnosed with severe depression, and dementia, in elderly patients, they end up severely abused and neglected. The metaphor of domestic violence is another chronic disease which is useful on clinicians.

Studies of domestic violence over a life span suggest that most likely, on-going illnesses and disease, that are typified by periods of quiescence and exacerbation, abuse are more often episodic and recurrent in a nursing or rehabilitation facilities then in an isolated event. This comparison can also help to remind doctors or physicians that the elderly and disabled are at an extremely high risk.

New York nursing homes are more likely to deny such practices. The patients, for the most part, are one-third of the impoverished population that register into the New York State nursing homes, and they are the ones whose bills get paid from the beginning of the process when admitted into  nursing homes or rehabilitation centers.

Across New York State a little over 22,000 are twice likely in getting admitted in a one-star, then a five-star nursing home, based on 2017 data from the NYS Department of Health, reported by the Buffalo News. They were four more times likely to be admitted to a one-start nursing home.

This must be addressed, investigated thoroughly. No human being should have to be robbed of their dignity and right to a decent, dignified, loving, and proper care.