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Mindy Akins
Ms. Tillery
British Literature
12 October 2012
Nursing home problems
Whether nursing homes are safe havens or not is questionable. Nursing homes are where
people go when they can no longer be cared for at home. Nursing homes are supposed to provide
their residents with a comfortable and dignified environment. While many facilities do live up to
this idea, others have failed. To its residents, a nursing home is a home; but to the owner, it is a
business. Many owners put their desire for profits over the residents‟ needs, and the result is
unnecessary suffering (Couch).
Many of the problems in nursing homes are not hard to fix. The most common injuries to
residents can easily be avoided if the nursing homes complied with the federal regulations and
were adequately staffed. The higher the number of staff hours means better care, and the lower
the number of staff hours means poorer care. Profits are the reason why nursing homes do not
just hire more staff and provide better care. Staffing is the easiest expense to control. A nursing
home owner can make money by reducing the hours of its nursing staff (Couch).
A facility that does not have a sufficient staff can decline residents or discharge them.
The law requires that facilities keep residents only when they can provide for their needs, but
nursing homes are hesitant to do this because that means giving up the revenue that the residents
bring in. The result is that the homes continue to take in more residents without hiring more staff.

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In nursing homes, the connection between staffing and quality of care is clear. If cuts in staff and
resources in a nursing home lead to harm, then whoever makes the decision to make those cuts
are responsible to those that are harmed by it (Couch).
A large number of frail, elderly Americans in nursing homes are suffering from
ineffectual care at the end of their lives. One study shows that putting nursing home patients with
kidney failure does not improve their quality of life and may even push them into further decline.
The other study shows many with advanced dementia will die within six months and perhaps
should have hospice care instead of aggressive treatment. Doctors, caregivers, and families need
to consider making the feeble elderly who are near death comfortable rather than treating them as
if a cure were impossible (Couch).
Patients need to be cared for to make the last days of their lives as comfortable as
possible. Within the first year of residing in a nursing home, many patients die while others
decline in their ability to do simple tasks such as walking, bathing, and getting dressed. Research
found that during the patients‟ final three months, forty-one percent received aggressive care;
however, if the person making their medical decisions was aware of their poor prognosis, they
were less likely to receive aggressive care near the end of their life. Nursing home residents who
had hospice care during the last month of their lives are half as likely to be hospitalized (Couch).
The Leas Cross nursing home scandal was exposed by a nurse using a hidden camera.
Installing cameras into nursing homes should be an option if the staff, owners, residents, and
relatives agree to it. Tapes would make inspection easy and make sure that nothing is happening
that is not supposed to happen. If necessary, an online inspection could be carried out. Since the
relatives are paying for their rooms, they should be allowed to request that a webcam be installed

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so that, after visits, families could do a late-night check. If the nursing home has nothing to hide,
this should not be a problem (“Film all nursing”).
Serious overuse and misuse of powerful drugs are found in nursing homes. Many patients
are being drugged into a stupor just to make them easier to care for. Drugs can help stop
agitation when they are prescribed properly. They also permit patients to be alert, responsive,
and capable of interaction. Instead of giving them the right doses, patients are being drugged into
stupor for the convenience of nursing home staffs. Stupor is the result of inept prescription or
administration of drugs (“Why Nursing Homes”).
Elderly citizens are treated as lesser humans, and it is becoming clear. The elderly die in
nursing homes every day. It seems it should not be considered a tragedy since they are elderly.
Many patients in nursing homes are not treated properly. Although their screams from pain are
audible, the staff does not come to their rescue (“Elderly treated as lesser”).
Many of the diseases patients are diagnosed with have no cure, but families can help by
visiting more often and choosing a nursing home carefully. Patients who have malnutrition and
dehydration need special attention. It is not always possible for busy families give their loved
ones this kind of attention. The shortage of staff also makes it difficult to give them the attention.
That is why it is important for families to choose a good home (“Starving for Care”).
Families and staff have to work together to make sure patients are cared for. For families,
improving care means watching their loved ones more closely. Improving care means to help
with meals and getting hands-on with care. Mostly, it means just showing up, but this is
sometimes hard to do. Some facilities have tried harder to make meals more appetizing and
stressing the importance of nutrition, but experts say families can have a bigger impact.Elderly

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people have no one to protect them. Nursing homes can take simple steps to ease problems with
patients who have malnutrition and dehydration. Buffets, finger foods, and smoothies would be
beneficial. When residents lose too much weight, it can mean a number of things. The resident
could be ill, refuse to eat, is depressed, or a medical problem.The patients‟ losing weight could
also mean that the resident is not being fed properly, or the nursing home‟s nutrition program is
lacking what it needs to have (“Starving for Care”).
Investors acquire nursing homes, reduce costs, and increase profits and quickly resell
facilities for significant gains. Many regulatory benchmarks say that residents at those nursing
homes are worse off than they were under previous owners. Mangers at nursing homes that are
acquired by large private investors have cut expenses and staff, sometimes below minimum legal
requirements; residents at these homes suffer. Facilities owned by private investment firms have
residents that are fared more poorly than occupants of other homes (“Golden Opportunities: At
Many”).
The typical nursing home has low scores when it comes to tracking aliments or illnesses.
The ailments include bedsores and easily preventable infections, as well as the need to be
restrained. Before they were owned by private investors, many homes scored well. Residents‟
families tend to respond to such declines in care by suing. Regulators levy heavy fines against
nursing home chains when under-staffing leads to lapses in care. Private investment companies
make it very challenging for plaintiffs to succeed in court cases. By contrast, publicly owned
nursing homes choose who are allowed to control their facilities in security filings and other
regulatory documents. Some families of residents say these investment companies protect over
investors who profit while care for the patients decline. When this happens, it makes it unable to
find out who is responsible for the patients‟ care (“Golden Opportunities: At Many”).

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Cutting costs has become an issue at homes owned by large investment groups. Owners
need to stop laying off nurses that are essential to keeping patients safe. Chains make a lot of
money doing this, but it is at the cost of human lives. Nurses are often residents‟ main medical
providers. Most nursing home residents need at least 1.3 hours of care a day from nurses, but
homes owned by large investment companies typically provide only one hour of care a day.
These owners refuse to hire people and say they can make do with the staff that they have.
Regulators usually visit nursing homes about once a year, but in some cases, they have to visit
more due to residents‟ complaints of the home failing to follow doctors‟ orders, cutting staff
below the legal minimums, blocking emergency exits, storing food in uncleanly places, and other
health violations. One patient suffocated because his tracheotomy tube became clogged. He
complained he could not breathe, but there were no records showing that staff had checked on
him for almost two days (“Golden Opportunities: At Many”).
Our nation is beset by outrageous scandals. One of the biggest and most shameful
scandals of all has been largely overlooked: The unspeakable treatment of the helpless elderly in
what are mistakenly called „nursing‟ homes. Thousands of elderly people are being killed by
neglect each year because their nursing homes fail to provide them with basic care. Nine out of
ten homes do not have enough nurses and to provide the residents with sufficient food and liquid
or to prevent bedsores. A large number of aged residents in poorly supervised nursing homes lie
unattended in their own filth. They suffer from bedsores that often expose their bare bones, and
they gradually die from dehydration and inadequate nourishment.Millionaires have nothing to
worry about. They can pay for someone to care for them. Unfortunately, the poor who must
depend on Medicaid will most likely fall into the hands of neglectful custodians in the last years
of their lives. What really kills people in nursing homes rarely show up on death certificates.

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These are often signed by doctors who have not autopsied – or even seen in real life – the people
they are signing off on. The elderly in this country have done nothing wrong to make their
government and their neighbors willing to have them starved, neglected, and uncared for
(“Neglected to Death”).
In dozens of nursing homes across Illinois, elderly people are living side by side with
recently paroled inmates. Some of these inmates are murderers and sex offenders, and they were
placed into the most geriatric homes by the state Department of Corrections. The state is
dumping inappropriate people – especially mentally ill patients – in nursing homes in order to
get the federal government to help pay for their care. Nursing home administrators claim to be
aware of which residents are parolees, but they place no special restrictions on them. They do not
advise other patients, their families, or visitors that convicted murderers, rapists, and armed
robbers may be living down the hall. These are people that nobody would want in a nursing
home. Screening is not being done appropriately when criminals are living beside residents.
Many of these inmates who have been paroled into nursing homes have been sent back to prison
for parole violations committed while in nursing homes. At least a dozen of the approximately
150 inmates who have been paroled into nursing homes since 1999 have been sent back to prison
for parole violations committed while in nursing homes. One parolee sexually assaulted a woman
at a southern Illinois nursing home. The only way to judge whether individual parolees pose a
threat to nursing home neighbors is to watch them once they've moved in. Elder advocates worry
that crimes may be going unreported. Not reporting crimes poses as a great threat, especially for
seniors that suffer from dementia. They are the least able to defend themselves, and they are the
least able to report incidents when they occur. It is up to the nursing home to determine whether
a parolee is suitable for admission. Nursing homes are relied on to make honest assessments as to

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whether or not they are able to handle the individuals‟ needs without compromising the care of
others in the facility. Families and young woman who apply for jobs at the nursing home are not
being notified that criminals are residing there (“Ex-Inmates Sent to Live”).
Nursing home patients have been dragged down hallways, doused with ice water,
sexually assaulted and beaten in their beds, yet few prosecutions have been made. Many physical
and sexual abuse cases in nursing homes are not treated the same as similar crimes elsewhere.A
crime is a crime, whether in or outside of a nursing home. Residents should not spend their days
living in fear. Nursing homes lie about what really happens to patients. A resident at the
Westpark Rehabilitation Center in Evansville, Ind., in September 1999 was knocked unconscious
by another resident. She died a month later. The home reported to a hospital that she had fallen
(“Neglected to Death”).

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Works Cited
Couch, David. “The Elderly in Nursing Homes Are Vulnerable to Abuse.” The Elderly. Trans.
Sylvia Engdahl. N.p.: Greenhaven Press, 2011. N. pag. Current Controversies Series.
Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 14 Sept. 2011. <http://ic.galegroup.com////
ViewpointsDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Viewpoints&disableHighlighting=false
&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3
010427263&mode=view&userGroupName=cant48040&jsid=8b0ff238d4c4580b4ff1a3c
86bdc1584>. - - -. “Some Nursing Home Elderly Get Futile Care.” The Elderly. Ed.
Sylvia Engdahl. N.p.: Greenhaven Press, 2011. N. pag. Current Controversies Series.
Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 14 Sept. 2011.
<http://ic.galegroup.com////?displayGroupName=Viewpoints&disableHighlighting=false
&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3
010427256&mode=view&userGroupName=cant48040&jsid=3e5494e0d80f4c26e62cd4a
3984ffa70>. “Elderly treated as lesser humans; Nursing home gave Tylenol to resident
with broken leg, July 21.” Editorial. The Toronto Star 26 Sept. 2011: n. pag. Global
Issues in Context. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. <http://find.galegroup.com//
infomark.do?contentSet=IAC-
Documents&docType=IAC&idigest=b527955b5caccdb4b4a2d40e86fe061a&type=retrie
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sion=1.0&source=gale>. “Ex-Inmates Sent to Live with Elderly in Nursing Homes.”
Chicago Tribune 29 Nov. 2002: n. pag. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 26 Sept. 2011.
<http://sks.sirs.com/bin/hst-article-display?id=SSCHEH-0-
2744&artno=0000162828&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Nursing%20homes%2C%20Co

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mplaints%20against&title=Ex%2DInmates%20Sent%20to%20Live%20with%20Elderly
%20in%20Nursing%20Homes&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=Y&ic=N#summary>. In
Illinois, elderly people are living with paroled inmates who were placed into the homes
by the state. This is believed to put their lives in danger. They need to be living in a more
appropriate place.
“Film all nursing homes.” Letter. Sunday Times [London] 26 Sept. 2011: n. pag. Global Issues in
Context. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. <http://find.galegroup.com//.do?contentSet=IAC-
Documents&docType=IAC&idigest=b527955b5caccdb4b4a2d40e86fe061a&type=retrie
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1831&artno=0000269122&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Nursing%20homes%2C%20Co
mplaints%20against&title=Golden%20Opportunities%3A%20At%20Many%20Homes%
2C%20More%20Profit%20and%20Less%20Nursing&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=Y&i
c=N>. significant gains. “Neglected to Death.” Health Letter Jan. 2003: n. pag. SIRS
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display?id=SSCHEH-0-
2744&artno=0000165266&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Nursing%20homes%2C%20Co
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ous%20Condition%20of%20American%2E%2E%2E%2E%2E%2E&res=Y&ren=Y&go
v=Y&lnk=Y&ic=N#summary>. “Nursing Home Abuse Unlike Other Crimes.”
Chronicle-Tribune [Marion] 4 Mar. 2002: n. pag. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 26 Sept.

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2011. <http://sks.sirs.com/bin/hst-article-display?id=S4450859-0-
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r%20Crimes&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=Y&ic=N>. “Starving for Care: Family
Members Can Curb Nursing Home Malnutrition.” Detroit News 29 Nov. 2004: n. pag.
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2744&artno=0000207701&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Nursing%20homes%2C%20Co
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an%20Curb%20Nursing%20Home%20Malnutrition&res=Y&ren=Y&gov=Y&lnk=Y&ic
=N “Why Nursing Homes Use Antipsychotic Drugs.” Letter. The New York Times 5 Apr.
1989: n. pag. Global Issues in Context. Web. 26 Sept. 2011.
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