Some have read the article at the NYT about nursing home investors buying up homes, cutting back services to the point of near neglect, and selling the properties for a huge profit. This is an awful horrible thing to read about, but it’s been happening a lot longer than some think. Those of us who have worked for chain owned facilities KNOW of the cutbacks and supply shortages, and many of us learn to work around it. When we do that, we enable this scheme to continue. When we make excuses for these places, when we claim it’s “not that bad”- we are allowing some terrible wrongs to happen. We’re fooling ourselves just a little; but in fact we are fooling the public a lot. One thing about this: We may not even be aware we are employed by one of these nursing homes believe it or not. IF you were hired by an outside group, and IF the facility places limits upon basic supplies AND there are a very few RN’s in house, you probably work at an facility that is being managed under this profit driven scheme.

Nonetheless, the details of the article are ethically wrong and we would all do the entire industry a favor by refusing to work at facilities owned by these groups; families and doctors would be wise NOT to allow an admission and investors would be shocked to know they are party to such neglect- investors are often people like you and me- who buy some stock hoping to make a little profit. Being assured by the holding company of good care and all, and having little real knowledge of the industry, investors continue to buy.

This should also serve as another reason we need to work towards getting people out of nursing homes. The desire to earn a few million bucks on the lives of our most treasured and vulnerable people is inexcusable. But money talks- our elderly often won’t.

We would be very interested in hearing from more aides who believe they are currently or have, in the past, worked for a home managed like this.