08/22/2008
Moving a parent or sibling into a nursing home is emotionally and financially difficult. Keeping them there may be getting even harder.
The Wall Street Journal reports that increasing numbers of frail and sick residents are being forced out of nursing homes across the country. In some cases, they're asked to leave because they are difficult or expensive to care for. It violates federal law for a nursing home to evict residents for those reasons.
In other cases, the Journal reported, patients are sent packing because Medicaid, which covers the cost of their care, pays nursing homes less than other insurance.
No one tracks the number of elderly residents in nursing homes or assisted care centers who are evicted each year. But the number of formal complaints filed with the federal government about what's called "discharge practices," which include evictions, rose to 8,500 in 2006 — double the number in 1996.
Such allegations have become the second most frequent type of complaint against both nursing homes and assisted-living centers, although the number of complaints is relatively low, compared to the number of people receiving care in the nation's 16,500 nursing homes and 39,500 assisted-living facilities.
"It's happening [evictions] very often," said Richard Cavanaugh, who heads Missouri's long-term care ombudsman office in St. Louis. "Staffing is the biggest problem nursing homes face. Very often, we hear them say that this [patient] is taking up too many of our resources."
Federal nursing home standards are enforced by state health department inspectors who investigate complaints and conduct nursing home inspections. In Missouri, that oversight too often has been lax.
Evicting frail, elderly nursing home residents can be just as deadly as neglect or abuse. Without adequate government oversight and increased consumer education, the number of tragedies is sure to grow.
Abridged
SOURCE: Collinsville Herald
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