Should I report my nursing facility for neglect?

[Figglehorn68]

I'm a CNA who just started a new job at a nursing home. One of the residents that I now care for has a stage 4 bed sore. Before I started working here, I'd never even seen a stage 4 bed sore. At the previous nursing home I worked at for almost 2 years, I never encountered anything beyond a stage 2 bed sore, the reason being that we always took necessary measures to ensure that the sore would heal instead of become worse. I obviously do not have a medical degree, but it seems to me that a stage 4 bed sore is something that could only be the result of neglect. I'm not sure if the resident's family is aware of the severity of this bed sore because when I began asking questions to the charge nurse, she dodged them all which I thought was awkward.

My question is, how can I be sure that the right people know about this resident's condition? And why is the nurse so "hush-hush" about it? Have any of you ever encountered a patient with a stage 4 bed sore that wasn't a direct result of severe neglect? I don't exactly trust this particular nursing home because they have a bad reputation and when I first started training, they literally told me to never chart anything as "N/A" because they get more money from medicare this way. For a nursing facility to openly support medicare fraud is also something new to me. What should I do?

[sallyrnrrt, ADN, RN]

viva and capecod said it best...

in my 42 years as a nurse i have never seen a stage 4, from neglect......i have seen end of life, catabolism, multi system failure, resulting in unavoidable advanced pressure ulcers as stg 3 & 4.