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Profiteering, Abuse, Neglect At US Nursing & Assisted Living Facilities
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First Do No Harm |
In 1968 Antony Armstrong-Jones published a documentary "Don't Count
The Candles"
regarding
the tragedy of senior confinement. An 80 year old man was taken against his
will to a nursing home.
One scene showed him wistfully looking out the window as his relative left, one silent tear
sliding down his cheek.
NPR's Ina Jaffe reported in 2020 that many nursing and assisted living institutions are running on a shoestring, with understaffing while money is siphoned to owners'
pockets, owners who ask
Medicaid and Medicare for more money.
1. Excessive Profiteering B H Gray writes that 75% of these facilities are now for-profit ones. 2. Shoestring understaffing causes neglect and sometimes premature death. 3. The lack of ethical supervision from federal agencies, owners, and managers generates abuse from yelling at residents to physical assaults, chemical and physical restraints. 4a. Substandard food is a complaint across the US. Some facilities are spending as little as $6.00 a day per person, less than prisons. At one national chain, wilted lettuce salads, an occasional banana, say residents, are the some total of the 'fresh food'. 4b. In many assisted living and nursing homes as well as hospitals and prisons, kosher, halal, vegetarian and vegan food is difficult to obtain. 5. Noise .. talking and laughing loudly during midnight shift Loud sounds interfere with the sleep and health of residents. 6. Constant interruptions which wake up residents who don't want breakfast or are napping or on the phone etc. 7. Incarceration Living behind locked doors without the freedom to leave is imprisonment 8. Lack of privacy, including conjugal rights 9. Theft 10. Denial of the right to refuse medication or vaccines. In the last 4 years, NPR The FDA requires a label on antipsychotics (which should be called propsychotics) warning of possible homicides or suicides. Many of these medications cause a permanent shaking, the medical term abbreviated to 'tardiff'. 11. The right to refuse breakfast because residents have never eaten breakfast or because they want to sleep is not honored. 12. Abuse of Durable Power of Attorney 13. Premature Deaths: Poor air filtration systems, food poisoning, constant noise and interruptions, nurse and caregiver understaffing, abuse, isolation, and confinement depression are some factors of high death rates in assisted living and nursing home facilities. 14 Conflict of interest: Some facilities are owned by physicians who have a profit motive in filling empty rooms, turning their temporary patients into 15. There are virtually no black residents in these expensive jails, despite the fact that many 16 Isolation, says the AARP, is a factor in premature deaths among residents in these facilities.. 17 One doctor, a major investor in a new very expensive assisted living place, could not fill the empty rooms because of the cost. A wealthy older patient tried to change physicians. He obtained a medical power of attorney, had him institutionalized. When he worked to get an attorney, the doctor took away sent to him, and cancelled all visitors. Whenever the resident objected to staff, he was given an antidepressant against his will. After 9 months, tardiff dyskinesia was apparent, a constant shaking. The prison had turned into a Bastille. 18. Some health authorities question the prioritization of these facilities for resident vaccines, since these are often the most immune challenged or those with the most preexisting conditions, and therefore those most likely to have lethal side effects. 19. Well meaning relatives, relatives who want to protect the assets of a parent or other relatives, can kill the Spirit of another. Nursing homes and assisted living places have very high rates of death. 20. Unfortunately many of these places treat residents like cattle, forcing them to go to be weighed, to go to bingo or worship services or singalongs, ordering them back to their rooms if they are visiting others, etc. So many lose the desire to live, while existing in these places, that the buildings become slaughterhouses. Profiteering and neglect just-6-08-per-person-a-day-thats-lower-than-prison-120421 https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/federal-court-strikes-down-trump-administration-rule-allowing-refusals-health-care
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