In the just over a year that Bob Trout has lived at this long-term care facility, his wife of over 18 years, Marinda Trout, has seen firsthand how the pandemic, and subsequent staffing problems, have impacted his life. “I have put him to bed a handful of times,” Marinda said. “A lot of people, a lot of employees that went through the pandemic, don't want to return to long-term care,” Jay Moskowitz, the CEO of Vivage, the company that manages this facility, said. It’s an industry-wide challenge.
In an effort to help Illinois seniors stay in their homes for longer, officials announced Monday the state will be participating in a new federal program that could provide them with an alternative to nursing facility care. In a statement, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) would expand seniors’ options for community-based services.
People might want to think twice before relying on federal quality ratings to help choose a nursing home for an elderly or frail relative, a new study warns. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established the Nursing Home Compare website in the 1990s to publicly report patient safety indicators for every nursing facility in the nation. But the site appears to drastically underreport the number and severity of bedsores suffered by Medicare residents in specific nursing homes, researchers reported recently in the journal Medical Care.
Harborview Medical Center is currently diverting non-emergent patients as the hospital copes with overcrowding. Other local hospitals face similar concerns.
A long-term residential facility for seniors in Lacey was issued a $1,000 civil fine by the Washington state Department of Social and Health Services last week after an investigation found that the facility violated residents rights as protected under state law.
In a letter shared with McClatchy by Rep. Laurie Dolan, D-Olympia, and Sen. Sam Hunt, D-Olympia, DSHS said that Bonaventure "failed to ensure residents had the right to be free from interference during a meeting with their legislative representatives, and failed to ensure staff treated residents with respect and dignity."