Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 22, 1990 TAG: 9007230297
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That is one way to get the nursing-home industry's attention.
Another has turned up in a federal court in Mississippi, where a jury awarded damages to the families of nursing-home patients who had been neglected and abused.
This was not the kind of gross abuse that could kill a patient. This was the kind of neglect and abuse that, it seems, occurs all too often in nursing homes across the country.
A jury awarded the family of Margie Berryhill $50,000 because the home had left her in her own excrement, $25,000 because the staff had abused her verbally. The family of Frederick Bolian got $15,000 because he had not been bathed, another $15,000 because he was kept in a smelly room, $60,000 for the home's failure to give him needed physical therapy. And so on.
The jury also found that Beverly Enterprises' failure to provide good care was so "willful, wanton, malicious or callous" that the corporation should pay another $125,000 to each claimant. The total to each family: $250,000.
The awards break new legal ground because they deal not with life-threatening situations but with basic care. The amounts are not enormous for these litigious times. But they're large enough to be noticed by nursing homes everywhere.
Certainly by Beverly Enterprises, which operates more than 800 homes in the United States. A Beverly spokesman said that since the Mississippi cases were brought, the firm has introduced a program to assure good care.
Beverly still has a ways to go. One of its homes is Liberty House in Roanoke, where a former employee was charged only this month with severely beating a bedridden 94-year-old resident, breaking both her legs. "It's unfortunate that these accidents happen," an administrator said wanly, "but they also happen at home."
A lot of other things also happen inside nursing homes. A study published last year in The Gerontologist magazine reported that 36 percent of 577 nursing-home aides interviewed had witnessed at least one incident of physical abuse in the preceding 12 months. At least one incident of psychological abuse - yelling at or threatening to hit a patient - was reported by 81 percent. Patients, as well as families and friends who learn of abuses, may hesitate to complain for fear treatment will turn vengeful or the patient be ousted.
Nursing homes don't seek out abusive people to hire, but often get what they pay for in demanding, minimum-wage jobs. The work is dirty and difficult. Patients, mostly elderly, may be cantankerous, incontinent or demented. The job puts a premium on understanding, patience and devotion. A great deal is expected of the people who fill those positions.
It is not, however, too much to expect that residents of nursing homes - who are, basically, helpless and often friendless - get a decent level of care.
It's unfortunate that the issue has found its way into the tort system. That is a messy, prolonged and inefficient way of righting only a few of the wrongs that occur, and could add significantly to the cost of nursing-home care. It certainly offers no substitute for enlightened regulation. Even so, damage awards may serve as another prod for nursing homes to shape up. The industry ought to do so on its own.
by CNB