Thanks to power, greed, and political manipulation, many long-term nursing facilities have become the rendering plants for our mothers, fathers, and disabled relatives. In recent years, nursing home abuse has become a widespread issue throughout the United States.

Since 2007 marks the beginning of another election year, healthcare issues are on the lips of every candidate clamoring to become the next president. Although these parties have opposing views on everything from the war in Iraq to legalized abortion, one of the most common themes for both the democrat and republican parties is their desire to let big business run our schools, prisons, and healthcare facilities.

Elder Abuse Helplines and Hotlines:
To be refered to law firms that represent the finest in helping victims of nursing home or elder abuse in their state call the Free Legal Hotline 1-888-776-5380
If the situation is serious, threatening, or dangerous call 911 or the local police for immediate help.

Thanks to political parties that allow private interests and private services to become monopolized, organizations like nursing homes continue to stay a big business, making big profits.Whenever we think about nursing homes, we envision the elderly, lined up in wheelchairs, not recognizing their family or friends. Most of the time, they are our parents and grandparents, our spouses’. Sometimes they are our children. Within that vision are other people that contribute to a piece of that puzzle. They are the caregivers hired to watch over them. Usually,they are the angels of mercy. Sometimes, they are the angels of death.

Over the past decade, long-term nursing agencies have made every attempt at hiring qualified employees. Unfortunately, for the disabled many times they came up short-handed. Finding dedicated and loving humanitarians was harder than originally anticipated. Desperate, to fill employee vacancies and take advantage of government incentives, the corporate legal eagles prompted their charges to accept greed over quality care. Unfortunately, this became one of the key ingredients to begin their downward spiral. Minimum wages and poor working conditions encouraged the medical community to scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to fill employee quotas. Unfortunately, for our families, the downside to this way of doing business usually ends with phone calls at 3:00 in the morning informing us that our loved one was beaten, raped or worse; murdered.

Although something can be said for persons with troubled pasts trying to rehabilitate themselves and merge back into society, trusting them with such precious gifts as fragile ninety year old men and women can be disastrous. Usually, people with troubled pasts, are so busy trying to cope with their own demons, they have very little time to care if our parents and grandparents are hungry, wet, or cold.According to GAO reports,roughly 37% of the workers in or around medical facilities have some kind of a criminal past. Although nurses aides compose the largest proportion of nursing home employees, other people such as security guards, maintenance workers, and laundry workers have also been found responsible for nursing home abuse.

Statistically speaking, many of our healthcare workers are either qualified older adults, young welfare mothers who have completed their GED’s, or college students trying to get by without working for telemarketing firms and quick marts for minimum wage. Approximately 3-5 million people work in the healthcare industry today and that number is expected to increase by 5% in 2010. In order to get a better picture of healthcare and the services it provides, it is important to expose the corporate view of privatization, and the attitudes of the senior executives running these kinds of facilities. Healthcare industries in this country have always taken advantage of the frail by ruthlessly and selfishly exploiting vulnerable senior citizens, and mentally challenged adults. Overcharging for services has always been one of the ways they have taken advantage of the sick.

In the late eighties, Medicare fraud ran rampant. Instead of penalizing the offenders, the government rewarded them by offering them more money for moving patients into Post-Acute care facilities. Therapy programs replaced longer hospital stays, and nursing home not-for-profit investors got richer by the day.Medicaid and Medicare pays for patients care at a flat rate/ per person basis. In 1995, Medicaid paid nursing homes eighty dollars a day to care for a resident. Medicare paid two hundred dollars a day. Consequentially, Medicaid patients were on the bottom of the totem pole and it made them less profitable and less desirable residents to care for. Any patient that was solvent enough to pay cash or offer their properties in exchange for a place to live, were the most desirable patients to allow into assisted living facilities. Medicaid patients were usually “kicked out” of the better places and transferred to inadequate facilities. Medical needs were never a consideration and it usually resulted in abuse, neglect, and death of patients.

If I had Only Known; Breaking The Silence of Caregiver Abuse by Brooke Jennings is a “no nonsense” account of caregiver neglect and a book that every family member should read before placing their loved ones into any long term medical facility.Brooke Jennings is a woman who is passionate about educating the public regarding nursing home abuse/negligence. Since the death of her son, Michael, she has been active in rallying supporters for The Faith Foundation (fighting abuse in today’s healthcare), by helping to change healthcare regulations regarding the housing and hiring of ex-felons and substance abusers.

Elder Care, Nursing Home Abuse