Shortly after Christmas, Julia Lucas got a call at home in New York from her mother's nursing home in St. Petersburg. Her mother, ailing with dementia, was getting violent and needed to move to a more secure facility.
So when Lucas wanted to wish her mother a happy birthday on March 2, she called the new nursing home. A man said she wasn't listed in her mother's file. A day later, after some frantic phone calls, a hospital chaplain called.
He said: "Do you have anyone there with you? I have something to tell you. Your mother died on Jan. 27 in the emergency room."
Lucas' mother, Anne Whitney Mataix, had been dead for five weeks. Unclaimed, she was turned over to the county, which cremated her body.
Mataix was a 65-year-old woman who led a difficult life, often on the fringes and estranged from her family. But when she died, she had lived for months in a licensed nursing home, had a daughter in contact with her caretakers and had an appointed health care surrogate.
Still, the vulnerable woman's death went unmarked by a system that lost track of the most vital details of her life.
Full Article and Source:
Call to mom at Gulfport nursing home leads to dire news: She died weeks ago
So when Lucas wanted to wish her mother a happy birthday on March 2, she called the new nursing home. A man said she wasn't listed in her mother's file. A day later, after some frantic phone calls, a hospital chaplain called.
He said: "Do you have anyone there with you? I have something to tell you. Your mother died on Jan. 27 in the emergency room."
Lucas' mother, Anne Whitney Mataix, had been dead for five weeks. Unclaimed, she was turned over to the county, which cremated her body.
Mataix was a 65-year-old woman who led a difficult life, often on the fringes and estranged from her family. But when she died, she had lived for months in a licensed nursing home, had a daughter in contact with her caretakers and had an appointed health care surrogate.
Still, the vulnerable woman's death went unmarked by a system that lost track of the most vital details of her life.
Full Article and Source:
Call to mom at Gulfport nursing home leads to dire news: She died weeks ago
2 comments:
Questions point to Boca Ciega (Nursing) Center's Intake worker/s. Disgusting.
THe system lost track because the elderly are of little worth to society -- no one cares.
In this case, the nursing home called to say the mother was going to be moved, and that's what they should do.
But, when she died, did anyone have the thought to call the daughter? Of course they did -- but they didn't care.
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