Saturday, February 28, 2009
There are good nursing homes and bad ones
The operators of bad homes are reprehensible scum and as such it should have been anticipated that they would receive last minute protection from the Bushoviks.
The Bush administration shut off a source of information last fall about abuse and neglect in long- term care facilities that people suing nursing homes consider crucial to their cases.I knew a fellow who worked in the kitchen of one dump. The food was mediocre at best except once a quarter when the owners met for their business dinner meeting. Then the best steaks, lobsters and what-all arrived in the kitchen, but just for the owners. The owners were a group of local doctors profiting from the misery of others. Sadly, none of them received any professional censure when the state finally had to close down their shithole.
The change that affects the $144 billion nursing-home industry occurred with no public notice or attention, perhaps because of the array of last-minute rules that President George W. Bush’s appointees rushed out before leaving Washington last month.
“This is pretty stunning,” said Mark Kosieradzki, a plaintiff attorney in Plymouth, Minnesota. “Nobody was told. It was just done.”
The rule designates state inspectors and Medicare and Medicaid contractors as federal employees, a group usually shielded from providing evidence for either side in private litigation.
The restrictions affect about 16,000 nursing facilities in the U.S. and 3 million residents. The practical effect is to force litigants to go to greater lengths, including seeking court orders, to get inspection reports or depositions for cases they are pursuing or defending.
“This change hurts nursing-home residents and their families by allowing bad practices to be kept in secret by nursing homes and inspectors,” said Eric M. Carlson, an attorney with the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Los Angeles. “Government inspectors have the right to go into nursing homes and investigate, and they learn things that residents and families otherwise could never find out.”
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