Nursing homes (NH) and — by extension — long term care, have always been the also-rans in discussions related to the delivery of healthcare in this country. Generally, healthcare and the potential profits of third parties render policy considerations on anything but acute hospital care, ambulatory care, and drug and medical device patents as essentially insignificant. However, as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the rules of the game are about to change, if they haven’t already.

Spurred by social factors (the rapidly aging Boomer cohort), political factors (the access to healthcare for Medicare beneficiaries in NHs at the hands of a new White House), and high profile cases of patient abuse (the recent alleged sexual and physical abuse of patients by staff at a southern Minnesota NH) — the public’s knowledge of patient care in the NH/long term care setting is more acute than ever before.

Mainstream media outlets are constantly reporting on issues that surround this care environment, and the latest Minnesota story to qualify is a sad one: a popular wrestler in this state’s history whose glory days were in the 1950s and ’60s is linked to the harsh physical abuse of a fellow resident in his NH of residence; the former wrestler suffers from Alzheimer dementia and its horrific effects on mood. Although his history of pugilism/wrestling and its effects on his deteriorating cognitive function may be an issue here, there is a larger one afoot.

As more people age with dementia and/or mental illness, suffer from chronic conditions modern medicine cannot treat — but merely maintain, and cannot be cared for in any other environment; whose responsibilty is it to provide for the safety of that patient and others — as NHs continue to suffer from high staff attrition rates and lack of an “exciting” lifestyle environment newly graduating nurses and other ancillaries are willing to work in? | LINK

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