Shocked, I'm just shocked...

[lsanderson]

More Profit and Less Nursing at Many Homes
By CHARLES DUHIGG

Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.

The facility’s managers quickly cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier, records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell, according to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.

The investors and operators were soon earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes.

Residents fared less well. Over three years, 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court. Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staff levels were below mandatory minimums. When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a leg brace that was broken.

“They’ve created a hellhole,” said Vivian Hewitt, who sued Habana in 2004 when her mother died after a large bedsore became infected by feces.

Habana is one of thousands of nursing homes across the nation that large Wall Street investment companies have bought or agreed to acquire in recent years.

Those investors include prominent private equity firms like Warburg Pincus and the Carlyle Group, better known for buying companies like Dunkin’ Donuts.

As such investors have acquired nursing homes, they have often reduced costs, increased profits and quickly resold facilities for significant gains.

Comments

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

I want people like that to have to live in their homes when they're old and feeble. F@ckers. They never will of course, they have millions from screwing over others. I hope they roast in hell.

This rant brought to you by those who can't afford spiffy homes for their loved ones.

Corporate Eskimos

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Only instead of using icebergs (global warming stopped that possible solution) we put them into substandard care facilities.

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

If my mother weren't literally psycho, I'd do whatever it took to keep her from going into ANY nursing home. As it is, she's the worst patient I can imagine- urinates on things because she won't wear appropriate protection then doesn't tell you about it (this was all over my son's bed); is verbally abusive both directly ("You're so fat Ann!"- Ann thinks to self "Yeah Mom, but you're where I got my eating habits, and you're 100 pounds heavier..."</>; and indirectly (says to Megan, my daughter, "Your mother is the worst example in the world!"); lies about her health situation and habits- "My blood sugars are wonderful- between 80-100 every morning!"- but her A1C is like a 12 (which indicates that they're actually MUCH higher). Too toxic for me to have in my home, no matter how bad the alternatives are. My MIL, on the other hand, was pretty much a joy to have around- easygoing, polite, loved to have Michael around. Sure, she had some incontinence and personal cleanliness problems, but she had Alzheimer's- she couldn't help it. My mother, who had been a nurse and certainly knew better, accused my MIL of just being lazy. I don't wish her ill, but I hope her end is swift and unpreventable- that she drops in her apartment and isn't found til it's all over. I don't want her to suffer, and while I can't bring her into my home, I don't want her stuck in a nursing home either.

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

I'm glad my father went quickly. He would have been miserable in any facility where he didn't have total control over every aspect of his life, and (fortunately for me) he didn't want to leave his friends and everything that was familiar to move to a new city. I say "fortunately" because we would have made each other miserable had he moved in with me.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Ah, so that's where that NPR story came from (patients do less well in nursing homes run for profit).

(Then again, nursing homes are glorious experiences for anyone; many aren't dangerous, though.)