While the News-Journal’s recent series chronicling chronic patient care problems at the Delaware Veterans’ Home is invaluable, it misses the most vital point:
The same conditions found at the Delaware Veterans’ Home are prevalent at nursing facilities throughout the State of Delaware.
Under the willfully-negligent leadership of Vince “The Bulldog” Meconi and Carol “It’s the Nursing Home Industry That’s the Real Victim” Ellis, ‘long-term care residents’ protection’ was an oxymoron. Millions of dollars of State and Federal Medicaid reimbursements were paid out to facilities for care that they did not provide. Surprise inspections of facilities were virtually non-existent. Despite strong nursing home statutes, penalties were rarely imposed for even the most egregious violations. Carol Ellis publicly stated that she believed that Delaware nursing homes were overregulated, which would have made her an ideal ‘watchdog’ in the Bush Administration, but made her derelict in her duties as Division Director.
Jack Markell has installed a first-rate team in Sara Allshouse and Judge Susan Del Pesco to rectify this situation. A cursory reading of annual and complaint-driven surveys of Delaware nursing homes will confirm what ‘bulo is saying here. He is one of the few people to have read years and years worth of these reports in Delaware, and he could cite you chapter and verse on the abuses.
‘Bulo also cautions the new team about one of the industry’s biggest tricks. There are hundreds of people in Delaware ‘assisted living’ facilities, including Alzheimer’s patients, for bleep’s sake, that, by definition, belong in long-term care facilities. Which means that these residents receive less care than LTC residents even though they need at least as much. Overnight staffing in assisted living facilities is minimal, even though Alzheimer’s patients are awake and wandering at all hours of the night.
The Beast Who Slumbers agrees with Gov. Markell that expanding options to remain in the least-restrictive environment is ideal. However, as long as there are nursing facilities, as long as the State and Feds are paying roughly $150 million annually to Delaware nursing facilities, and as long as these residents, veterans and everyone else, are dependent on the state to protect them, they must be protected.