I don’t know what’s worse: Putting your parent in a facility where you have to worry, or being the person who’s trapped in an abusive facility:
The state of New York recently fined a Jamesville nursing home $16,000 for failing to protect residents of the home from being sexually abused by other residents.
The fines were a result of a state inspection conducted at the Iroquois Nursing Home last April where it was discovered that the facility failed to protect other residents in the dementia unit from two male residents who had histories of sexually abusing and being aggressive with other patients. The two men also had histories of abusing staff.
According to the report, in a 30-day period, one of the men exhibited aggressive, inappropriate, and sexually abusive behavior at least ten times.
Experts on nursing homes say they are seeing an alarming increase in these types of cases. Data from the New York Health Department appear to confirm that, with at least six substantiated cases of resident-on-resident sexual abuse over a three-year period.
There have also been multiple studies conducted on this serious issue. Cornell University conducted a study that surveyed over 2,000 nursing home residents in 10 homes throughout the state.
The study found that one in five nursing home residents had been a victim of at least one aggressive and negative encounter with other residents in the prior four weeks.
Nursing home residents who are a threat to other residents and staff usually suffer from some type of mental disability – such as Alzheimer’s disease – but are still physically able to get around.
One of the major causes of these incidents, experts say, is that many of these facilities are understaffed, leaving some of the most vulnerable members of our society unprotected.
Upon hearing of the fine the nursing home received, the third largest in the county in the past 10 years, Richard Grungo commented, “It is the duty of every nursing home facility to protect its residents. When families place their loved ones in a home, they expect – as they should – that their loved on will be well taken care of and protected. These cases of resident victimizations are unacceptable.”
So let’s cut Medicaid funding.