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CNN Sunday Morning

Nursing Home Residents Often Abused

Aired March 24, 2002 - 07:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a story that's becoming all too familiar -- elderly people in nursing homes often lonely, neglected, sometimes abused.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Now a new federal study confirms what many people have been saying. Nursing homes are woefully understaffed. Now what?

Well, Kathy Slobogin tells us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAN CLEMENT: Hi. How are you doing?

KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jan Clement's mother Ester is 98. She's living out a fate most of us would rather not think about.

CLEMENT: The only thing she can really do for herself is eat.

Ester's life has been a happy one, six grandchildren, eight great grandchildren. She lost her husband 10 years ago, but managed pretty well until a broken hip put her into a nursing home. That's when the nightmares began.

CLEMENT: I went in and found her shaking uncontrollably, thrashing about, tremendously high fever, totally incoherent. She had, was diagnosed with pneumonia but no one noticed.

SLOBOGIN: Jan is happy with the assisted living facility her mother is in now. But that's after three different nursing homes where she says chronic staff shortages left her mother neglected. At one, her mother choked on a pear and became unconscious. Jan says by the time they revived her, she had brain damage, which worsened her dementia.

(on camera): do you feel that her condition worsened because of the care?

CLEMENT: Definitely.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): there are a million and a half people living in nursing homes. A federal study ordered by Congress found more than 90 percent of those homes have too few workers to give adequate care. Getting staffs up to a minimum acceptable level would cost the industry $7.6 billion.

(on camera): The Bush administration acknowledges there's strong and compelling evidence that links staff ratios to quality of care. But in draft recommendations, it argues against setting federal staff minimums, calling instead for another study on the trade-off between quality and cost.

(voice-over): It recommends a free market approach, publishing the number of workers at each nursing home, hoping staffing levels may simply increase due to the market demand created by an informed public. The Bush administration would not comment on the recommendations, saying they're only a draft.

But advocates for the elderly have reacted with frustration.

DONNA LENHOFF, NATIONAL CITIZENS COALITION FOR NURSING HOME REFORM: It's simply unacceptable.

SLOBOGIN: Donna Lenhoff says the issue has been studied long enough.

LENHOFF: What's the cost of somebody sitting in their diapers uncomfortable and miserable for another hour or two or three or the whole night? What's the cost of somebody sitting unfed or lonely during their meals because there's no aide there who can feed them?

SLOBOGIN: But nursing home operators argue against minimum staffing levels as too rigid. Then, there's the question of cost.

(on camera): If the government mandated the staffing levels that are suggested in this report, could you afford it?

SOLAGE VIVENS (PH): Not now. Not now, unless they pay for it.

SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Solage Vivens, who manages a home in Washington, says the federal Medicaid program, which pays for the vast majority of care, sets its rates too low to pay for adequate staff.

VIVENS: You can't tell me you want me to deliver Cadillac care and pay me, you know, for a broken down car. It does not work.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What did you say?

SLOBOGIN: Jan Clement is tired of the excuses.

CLEMENT: If we don't take care of our frail, elderly citizens, each of us has the possibility of finding ourselves sitting in our own waste, sitting unable to walk, sitting restrained, waiting to be fed, hoping to die.

SLOBOGIN: A fate more and more may face as the baby boom generation moves into old age.

Kathy Slobogin, CNN, Washington.

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