Orlando Sentinel's Scott Maxwell: Florida is taking elderly down a dark, deadly path
The Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell wrote this week about how the 2011 Florida Legislature has passed a series of cruel legislation that would plunge Florida frail elderly in nursing homes and assisted living facilities even further into neglect and abuse . . . much of which has gone unpunished at the hands of Florida's government and regulatory agencies. Mr. Maxwell concludes that, apparently, "There may be profit in mistreating the elderly."
Florida is taking elderly down a dark, deadly path
Scott Maxwell--"TAKING NAMES"
May 15, 2011
The industry is facing fewer regulations. Staffing requirements are being lowered. The watchdog program is being neutered. The state is even trying to muzzle the watchdogs who dare to speak up for the elderly.
And all of this is happening while cases of horrid abuse — the likes of which you would barely believe in a Stephen King novel — are on the rise.
In Pinellas County, a 75-year-old Episcopal priest with dementia wandered off unsupervised and was found in a lake, his body ripped apart by alligators.
In the Panhandle, the owner of an assisted-living facility threatened disabled residents with a stick and refused to give them food and drugs.
In South Florida, a 71-year-old man with schizophrenia died from burns he received in a bathtub. At the same home, staff failed to stop residents beating one another with 2-by-4s.
Homes throughout the state are regularly caught using illegal restraints.
Residents are actually dying at a rate of nearly once a month as a result of abuse and neglect.
Nearly once a month. Dead.
All of those cases were revealed in a recent Miami Herald expose called "Neglected to Death." The impressive investigation of cases in recent years determined that "safeguards once hailed as the nation's best have been ignored in a spate of tragedies never before revealed to the public."
The findings are as chilling as they are repulsive.
And yet, as I and others at the Sentinel have been writing in recent months, the politicians are actually the enablers.
Look at what's happened just since Gov. Rick Scott took office.
The nursing-home industry was irritated with Brian Lee, head of the state's watchdog program. Lee and his army of volunteer ombudsmen would visit nursing homes, report cases of filth and neglect and insist that delinquent facilities clean up their act.
But barely a month into his term, our new governor ousted Lee — even though his program was wildly successful by any measure.
Surveys showed 98 percent satisfaction. The program had conducted a record-high 9,000-plus investigations the previous year. And it was one of the state's most cost-effective programs, because it was manned with 400 volunteers whose only concern were the elderly and frail.
After the head of the volunteer army got too vocal about Lee's ouster, she was ousted, too.
Next came the legislative attacks.
One bill actually targeted the volunteer watchdogs even further, trying to make it harder for them to visit facilities. That one didn't pass. But in a sweeping bill that did, legislators lowered the minimum number of hours of direct care that homes have to provide from 3.9 hours a day to 3.6.
This was largely a concession to the nursing homes, because the state also cut their Medicaid reimbursements by more than $180 million.
The state's message was clear: We're not going to pay you as much. But don't worry. You won't have to care for your residents as well as before.
The frontline nurses knew this was an awful idea and said as much. But they were ignored.
So just before midnight on the last Friday of the session, lawmakers rolled back some of the very protections they heralded as safeguards for seniors back in 2001.
It was a largely party-line vote. Most all Republicans from Central Florida supported it, except Sen. Paula Dockery.
But the hits may keep coming. There is talk of further caps on lawsuits against facilities that neglect their residents. Yes, muzzles for the watchdogs … and protection for the abusive facilities.
The Herald's series also exposed lax enforcement from state regulators who let problems fester, as they did at a Haines City facility where a 74-year-old retired postal worker eventually died after going 13 days without medication.
Obviously bad homes are not the standard. But the problems are more tragically common than they should be in a state with a big — and growing — elderly population.
We have a wicked combination: more facilities — and yet fewer inspections, lower standards, less staffing and increasingly lax regulations.
It is a recipe for disaster. And death.
If there is solace in all of this, it is that the people's voices are sometimes heard.
The bills meant to weaken the watchdog-ombudsmen program died — for now, anyway — after Floridians spoke up en masse … including many readers of this column and newspaper.
We must do better by the mothers, fathers and grandparents of this state.
There may be profit in mistreating the elderly. But there's nothing humane about it.
smaxwell@tribune.com or 407-420-6141
Copyright © 2011, Orlando Sentinel
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