The future of 
nursing home care

Comments (...)

E-mail this story

Print this story

Comments

Share

I have read a major newspaper report of a nursing home investigation by their investigative reporters, and it’s reported that nursing home indifference to its residents is a major health problem, particularly for the senior citizen residents.

The report indicates that there are doctors who over-medicate residents, and as a result, the patients are barely able to communicate (and, of course, being over-medicated they are easily handled and do not cause any inconvenience for the nursing home attendants). What compounds the tragedy is that apparently these doctors who continue this practice are immune from liability as is the nursing home.

Certainly this is a shameful practice, but hardly a new one in my experience. The practice of over-medication along with indifference by staff and lack of treatment continuity of the senior citizen residents in nursing homes have long been many nursing homes’ signature care. Unfortunately those patients who suffer from that lack of care and the families who watch their loved ones suffer from that lack of care do not have anywhere to go to claim responsibility. The industry is very clever in protecting their chain of accountability. Many nursing homes lack any liability insurance covering their mistakes and errors in treatment, and in order to protect themselves personally, they create shell corporations to insulate the profit-taking owners from any personal responsibility. Therefore, the very serious physical conditions that occur to the residents, many of whom suffer from malnutrition that eventually lead to organ shutdown and death, are not compensated nor are their families compensated for such egregious irresponsibility.

I’m sure many are not aware of the fact that a nursing home does not have to have liability insurance coverage to protect medical errors committed by their staff. You can’t drive in this state without having automobile liability insurance, but you can start a 200-300 resident nursing home without any insurance protection. There is no requirement in this state in order to obtain a license to establish a nursing home that you provide information concerning the protection of the residents from medical errors.

As a trial lawyer, if it wasn’t so serious it would be comical given the many current problems that exist in this country that are attributed to the trial lawyers. We are blamed for the economy, for health care costs, and I heard recently that we had something to do with the start of the Iraq war and the increase in the insurgency in Afghanistan. Watching the health care debate and hearing about the 1,500 page bill that is to be passed by Congress, all you hear about is the public option and/or limiting malpractice litigation so that we trial lawyers that do the medical malpractice cases will stop contributing to the health care costs. By the way, an independent government accounting department estimated that the cost of medical malpractice claims approximate one-half of 1 percent of the total health care costs. In my opinion that is a very small price to pay in any event, but certainly a small price to pay to require the medical profession to be accountable for the many, many medical errors that are committed annually in this country. I may be naive, but I believe that only those most callous individuals who cannot understand the suffering of many of the victims of medical errors could possibly agree with such little savings in exchange for total immunity to the health care industry for their medical errors that are causing catastrophic consequences.

If you have any concerns at all about the future of the senior citizens in the nursing home situation as well as the accountability of the medical profession for malpractice errors, you should contact your United States senators and congressional representatives and let them know how you feel about such immunity to be granted to both the owners of the nursing homes as well as the medical profession.

Anthony C. Raccuglia

Peru

Comments