Little Being Done to Stop Elder Abuse: Experts

Little Being Done to Stop Elder Abuse: Experts
By Maggie Fox


WASHINGTON (Reuters) — From the frail woman in a nursing home found with bruises on her face and hands to the man whose son set him on fire, more than a million older Americans have been abused, Congress heard Tuesday.

Yet information on such cases is only piecemeal, and policies on how to deal with them vary from state to state, experts told a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee.
One thing the experts agreed on: Someone at the federal level needs to take charge of the situation, gather statistics and try to find a way to deal with a problem that will only get worse as the population ages.

"Based on the best available estimates, between 1 million and 2 million Americans 65 or older have been injured, exploited or otherwise mistreated by someone on whom they depended for care and protection," the National Research Council said in a report issued Tuesday.
"Yet little is known about its characteristics, causes or consequences or about effective means of prevention or management."

The good news is that 70% of Americans aged 75 or older report their health as good or excellent. But 12.8 million need help with such daily tasks such as getting dressed, eating or managing their finances, the report said.

"On any given day, approximately 1.6 million people live in approximately 17,000 licensed nursing homes," Catherine Hawes of Texas A & M University System's Health Science Center in College Station told the committee. Up to a million live in 45,000 residential care facilities.
It is precisely the people who are least able to care for themselves who are most vulnerable to abuse, she said. But little is being done about it, said the research council, one of the independent National Academies. "Overall, the national response to elder mistreatment still remains weak and incomplete," its report reads.
The committee heard graphic details:

RAPED OR SET ON FIRE
"Abuse includes the elderly man who was beaten and set on fire by his son; the 96-year-old blind woman who was raped by her paid caregiver; the 72-year-old resident of a board and care home who weighed 60 pounds and had 30 bedsores, some of them to the bone," said Joanne Otto, executive director of the National Association of Adult Protective Services Administrators in Boulder, Colorado.

In addition to a lack of staff, she said, states have different laws on elder abuse, police and prosecutors lack training on the issue, there is little emergency housing for victims and a lack of in-home care, and little reliable data.
She and others called for oversight on the federal level.
Dr. Carmel Dyer of the Baylor College of Medicine, who is co-director of the Texas Elder Abuse and Mistreatment Institute in Houston, said there are often easy solutions.
"We were recently asked to see a 90-year-old man who was living in a nursing home. He had become bed bound, incontinent of urine and so delirious that he could only mumble," Dyer told the committee.

It turned out the patient was on inappropriate medications and once his drugs were changed, and he was treated for depression, he was able to leave the nursing home.
Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who chairs the committee, said doctors often lack the training to spot abuse, and people are afraid to report it.
"Our efforts at intervention can be misguided. Healthcare professionals often don't know who to call when they suspect elder abuse," Baucus said. "They may fear bringing punishment onto a well-meaning but poorly trained caregiver, or causing a community nursing home to be shut down."
But Hawes had one proposal. "If I were going to do only one thing to reduce abuse and neglect, it would be to increase staffing in the nation's nursing homes," she said.


SOURCE: Reuters

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This was originally published by Reuters on June 18, 2002. It just as relevant today! Reports, Studies and Researches have been done and published. NOT MUCH HAS CHANGED. We have to ask: What is holding up implementation of recommendations?