The New York Times Recently Wrote about putting an elderly parent or grandparent into a nursing home. It is an emotional, gut-wrenching experience. Deep down inside you feel guilty but yet there are no alternatives. What happens when the nursing home that you originally chose which was as nice as they come gets bought by Wall Street investors who are more interested in profit than the people they serve?Unfortunately this is a common scenario in today's economy. Rising healthcare costs cause smaller individual nursing homes to sell to remote investors who own hundreds of units or their subsidiary's subsidiaries own hundreds of units. The food chain of who owns what is complex for a reason so not one source or entity gets blamed for lack of care.
When a big chain of investors and their subsidiaries own a nursing home, profits rise. Unfortunately, they rise for the wrong reasons as important medical personnel are fired. Fewer personnel equal s greater profits and bad to worse care. (This sounds like health insurance.)
As more and more patients are dying, regulators repeatedly warn that staff levels are below mandatory minimums and started visiting more frequently only to find dirty kitchens and malfunctioning equipment and patients who are waiting longer for routine care. This is the ultimate nursing home abuse.
