Apr 16, 2009 10:43 pm US/Central
Group: Many Nursing Home Problems Go Underreported
(WCCO)
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After all of the abuse allegations at Good Samaritan Society in Albert Lea, a report from the Minnesota Department of Health says no deficiencies were noted at the nursing home. (File)
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The system designed to help Minnesotans choose a nursing home for loved ones is under fire. Serious flaws have been uncovered by a nursing home watchdog group that could mean you might not know about physical and sexual abuse happening inside Minnesota's nursing homes.
Barry Rubin tried to do his homework before settling on a nursing home for his 89-year-old mother.
"I looked at the rating system but it's not really clear how they're rated," Rubin said.
He spent a lot of time on the federal site
Medicare.gov that's supposed to show what's going on inside all nursing homes around the country.
The founder of a nursing home watchdog group says he can prove it's not. Wes Bledsoe was back in Albert Lea on Thursday night to detail the flaws he's found.
After all of the abuse allegations at Good Samaritan Society in Albert Lea, a report from the Minnesota Department of Health says no deficiencies were noted at the nursing home.
At a different facility in the state, someone saw an employee pick up a nightgown soaked with urine and that worker "shoved it in the resident's mouth and told her to shut up." Again, the Department of Health didn't note any deficiencies.
A spokesperson from the Minnesota Department of Health said "If a facility has taken appropriate steps to correct problems, they may not be cited with deficiencies."
However, when deficiencies aren't noted, they don't show up on the Medicare site, so there's no way you could know if you've only checked that Web site.
"This is information that we need to have to be able to make an informed decision if this is a facility we can trust," Bledsoe said.
Bledsoe said it's happening all the time. He found that 80 percent of confirmed abuse cases in Minnesota in the last four years didn't get reported to the feds.
"I think it's bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo that's deceiving the consumers and the American public about what's really going on in our long-term care facilities," said Bledsoe.
Rubin has been happy with the choice he's made for his mother, but he thinks he should have been able to find out much more before he made up his mind.
"They should report it and say that they've taken care of it and say what they've done to prevent them from happening in the future that's what you'd want to know," Rubin said.
Bledsoe said another big problem is the star system on the Medicare Web site. On a lot of the nursing home Web sites, a lot of the information is not available, so he's wondering how they can give a place four or five stars when there's no information.
WCCO tried to get someone from Medicare to talk about the problems with their Web site. A spokesperson said it would be several days before they could comment.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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