Why Nursing Home Residents Still Suffer Despite Tough State Laws
The New York Times
The Biden administration set stringent new federal staffing rules. But for years, nursing homes have failed to meet the toughest standards set by states.
For hours, John A. Pernorio repeatedly mashed the call button at his bedside in the Heritage Hills nursing home in Rhode Island. A retired truck driver, he had injured his spine in a fall on the job decades earlier and could no longer walk. The antibiotics he was taking made him need to go to the bathroom frequently. But he could only get there if someone helped him into his wheelchair.
By the time an aide finally responded, he’d been lying in soiled briefs for hours, he said. It happened time and again.
“It was degrading,” said Mr. Pernorio, 79. “I spent 21 hours a day in bed.”
Payroll records show that during his stay at Heritage Hills, daily aide staffing levels were 25 percent below the minimums under state law. The nursing home said it provided high-quality care to all residents. Regardless, it wasn’t in trouble with the state, because Rhode Island does not enforce its staffing rule.
An acute shortage of nurses and aides in the nation’s nearly 15,000 nursing homes is at the root of many of the most disturbing shortfalls in care for the 1.2 million Americans who live in them, including many of the nation’s frailest old people.
They get festering bedsores because they aren’t turned. They lie in feces because no one comes to attend to them. They have devastating falls because no one helps them get around. They are subjected to chemical and physical restraints to sedate and pacify them.
