[Riverhopper]

September 23, 2007

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.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/bu...ursing.html?hp

[gentlegiver]

Why does this NOT suprize me?? I have worked at many facilities owned by private investors, I wouldn't send my dog to them for flea treatments. When are these people going to realize that the elderly are a wealth of love and experience. They took care of others all thier lives, it's time to give them the same TLC back.

[Angie O'Plasty, RN]

It's such a shame that people would take such advantage of the weakest members of our society who have already given so much.

[PeachPie]

Yep. It's disgusting that human life is supposedly the most precious thing, yet they hire warm bodies with a few weeks of training who may or may not care to take care of grandma.

This is why I will shoot myself before I go feeble or senile.

[oramar]

Once again, an article alerting public to healthcare dangers that we talk about here all the time. I mean, I must have read a thousand post about bad staffing in nursing homes here at allnurses.

[Katnip]

It just boggle my mind that press is just now discovering this when it's been a problem for a long, long time and nurses have been saying so.

Just goes to show you that nobody listens to the nurses.

[GoLytely]

Originally Posted by Angie O'Plasty, RN

It's such a shame that people would take such advantage of the weakest members of our society who have already given so much.

And it's like kick a person when they're down. People still feel like old people should be okay with seeing what took them their whole lives to accumulate vanish before their eyes to make the nursing homes richer.

[Xbox Live Addict]

I worked for years in LTC, and I am as angry about the way Staff is treated as the residents. While NH owners rake in the big bucks, the staff is wrecking their health doing too much work for too little pay (in my part of the country, LTC does pay better than hospitals, but wages here are in the bottom 10 of all 50 states) and no health insurance. I was actually told one time, by NH management, when my BP was sky-high due to work-related stress, to just go to the university hospital and apply for welfare!

And retirement? Well, I guess when they're in their 70's and cannot work anymore, they can just apply for Medicaid and go live in the same nursing home they worked in.