By Staff
Did you see the story in the New York Times about Dowagiac Nursing Home?
Well, the Sept. 23 article didn't specifically mention Dowagiac Nursing Home, but it sure sounded like a similar situation before the state shut it down in July.
The Times examined more than 1,200 nursing homes purchased by private investment groups by examining data available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Times examined more than 1,200 nursing homes purchased by large private investment groups since 2,000, and more than 14,000 other homes.
The analysis compared investor-owned homes against national averages in multiple categories, including complaints received by regulators, health and safety violations cited by regulators, fines levied by state and federal authorities, the performance of homes as reported in a national database known as the Minimum Data Set Repository and the performance of homes as reported in the Online Survey, Certification and Reporting database.
The Times highlighted a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., that was struggling when a group of large private investment firms bought it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.
Managers quickly cut costs.
Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses was half what it had been a year earlier.
Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell. Soon, investors and operators were earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes.
Residents fared less well.
Over three years, 15 died from what their families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court.
Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staff levels were below mandatory minimums.
When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a broken leg brace.
"They've created a hellhole," said a woman who sued in 2004 when her mother died after a large bedsore became infected by feces, only to find its owners and managers spread control among 15 companies and five layers of firms, preventing her attorney from definitively establishing responsibility for her mother's care.
An Illinois man who evaded justice for almost a year for leaving the scene of an accident on Edison Road fatal to William Bennett Jr., 50, of Mishawaka, Ind., pleaded guilty Oct. 9.
Daniel S. Berebitsky, 43, faces up to eight years in prison for the November 2006 traffic death of Tim Bennett's brother.
Tim Bennett, who now lives in Los Angeles, was Dowagiac's Elks Citizen of the Year in 2003.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "Ignoring reality has become our national psychic self-preservation strategy … We're tuning out everything that threatens to invade our willfully oblivious bubble."
– Rob Sheffield. Or, why worry about another war when you can surf over to VH1 and watch Mystery in a fuzzy Dr. Seuss hat teach pick-up artistry?
"Every American loves free speech – for themselves. We think the other guy should shut up and sit down … nine out of 10 minutes of radio talk broadcast in America on any given day now takes a conservative view … If the FCC were to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine, talk radio would no longer be a part of the GOP base … The sad irony is that the only voice that isn't being heard in all this talk over talk is that of the public, which, after all, owns the airwaves over which this struggle is being waged."
– Tim Rutten,
Los Angeles Times