Ohio's Abysmal Nursing Homes

If I learned nothing more during my late mother’s recent illness, I learned that the state of senior care in Ohio is abysmal. We as a society should be ashamed of what we have done to our senior citizens. As one who is looking at age 60 just down the pike, I am personally frightened for myself and my wife. With the huge number of aging baby boomers just over the horizon, it will only get worse.

I have come to the conclusion that nursing homes are nothing more than a place to warehouse people until they die. Minimally, they are depressing. Many of them are smelly with poor ventilation. Some of them are dirty. They are grossly understaffed. Most of them are over-crowded. There is a shortage of beds in any of the facilities that are tolerable, and the mad dash to find a place for one’s loved one is something akin to herding cows into a pen…you take what you can get.

Physicians work for nursing homes on a full time basis, or close to it. They visit the patient once each month, and in between visits provide a physician’s assistant. Here is the rub, you never talk to talk to the doctor. They visit on odd days or at odd hours, and do not make themselves available to family. And you better have your paperwork in order, or they will scamper behind the various privacy laws and ignore you all together. The physician assistants that I have dealt with are flippant and snippy, and just plain uncaring. In both of the facilities my mother was in over the past 5 months, I never met either of the facility physicians, and only talked to one of them on the phone once…and he was irritated that I called him.

Most people enter nursing homes under the guise of rehab. Medicare will pick up part of the bill for 90 days if there is some physical improvement resulting from the ½ hour per day of therapy. But if you don’t recover from the stroke, or broken hip, it is custodial care city. In most nursing homes, the rehab facility is attached to a “full service” business…from assisted living to rehab to custodial care.

I was lucky to have my mother accepted into what I consider to be the finest extended care facility in the area for rehab. There is two year waiting list for custodial care, but there is a separate list for custodial care entry through the rehab center. If you are interested in extended care, you are on a much shorter list through rehab. If a spot opens up and you are next on the list, you are in like Flint. My mother was 1st on the list when her rehab ended…and we were told we had three days to move her out. She was deathly ill, and I was upset. So I took a day and went from nursing home to nursing home to nursing home, and was disgusted at what I saw. It was like a horror movie.

I made up my mind that if we had to move her, I would take her home with 24 hour nursing care. This option was available to me because I knew the end was very close. Fortunately, a friend intervened on my behalf, and I didn’t have to move her. She died 4 days later.

I want to make the distinction between the health care workers who work in these facilities, and the institutional flaws that are at the root of the problem. At both places my mother was in over her 5 month illness, the health care workers were caring and competent. But the system under which they operated made their jobs almost untenable. There is no way that these folks can provide adequate care to patients under the current system, no matter how hard they try.

When I researched homes for my mother that dreadful day when I was told I had to move her, I discovered that Ohio has some of the worst ranked nursing homes in the country, and is far down the list on the quality of our senior care. It shows.

Given that most of us will be there sometime in the future, we should all be concerned. This issue needs to rise on Ohio’s and the country’s priority list. It is time to raise the hue and cry.

Experience is the best teacher. Even though I work with seniors on a regular basis as part of my practice, I was still shocked when having to deal with these issues personally. I hope to address many of my concerns over the coming months, and hopefully raise awareness levels.

Houston, we have a problem.