Camera captures theft in Iowa nursing home, but legislation on the issue remains stalled

Based on video, a Des Moines care facility fired a worker suspected of theft

By Clark Kauffman

DES MOINES, Iowa (IOWA CAPITAL DISPATCH) - While legislation allowing all Iowa nursing home residents to have cameras in their rooms has failed to advance this session, the technology is being successfully used in one Iowa care facility.

State records show that unlike many Iowa nursing homes, Des Moines’ Greater Southside Health and Rehabilitation has a policy of allowing the use of resident-installed cameras so that family members can remotely monitor their loved ones.

The son of one elderly male resident of the home took advantage of that policy and had a camera installed in his father’s room at Greater Southside. Footage captured on Jan. 17, 2025, allegedly shows a certified nurse aide entering the man’s room at about 2 a.m., as the resident slept, and then accessing a locked drawer where the resident kept his money. It was later reported that $55 was missing from the drawer. Based on the video, the worker was fired.

The nurse aide was later interviewed by state inspectors and reportedly admitted entering the resident’s room but denied taking any money. She reportedly told inspectors that she was not aware the resident’s room was monitored by a camera installed by the man’s son.

The home’s administrator, Dirk Timm, told inspectors he watched the video on the son’s phone and it was evident to him that the nurse aide had unlocked the resident’s dresser drawer with a key, picked up something and placed the item in her pocket. He told inspectors the nurse aide informed him the resident had asked her to put his wallet in the drawer — a claim the resident denied.

The facility was subsequently fined $500 for failing to protect residents from abuse in the form of financial exploitation.

Timm told the Iowa Capital Dispatch the facility allows resident-installed cameras as long as they don’t intrude on the privacy of other residents and don’t capture bedside care in a manner that could violate a resident’s right to dignity. If a resident who wants an in-room camera has a roommate, the roommate and the facility must each agree to the use of such a device.

So far, Timm said, the policy of allowing cameras hasn’t caused any problems.

“There has been some suspicion of the cameras among some people, but I think that may be just paranoia,” he said. “But we do have information posted, as far as our policies go, and so if anyone does have an issue with the policy we just try to contact the resident’s family and let them know.”

After nine years, legislation remains stalled

A week after the incident at Greater Southside, legislation that would prohibit Iowa care facilities from barring the use of resident-installed cameras was introduced in the Iowa House and referred to a committee. Although it is backed by the state’s Office of Long-Term Care Ombudsman, it has failed to advance.

Similar legislation was introduced in the Iowa Senate last month, but it, too, has failed to advance.

Since 2017, similar legislation has repeatedly run into stiff opposition from the Iowa Health Care Association, the organization that lobbies the Iowa Legislature on behalf of many of the state’s nursing homes.

During the 2023 legislative session, IHCA lobbyist Merea Bentrott told Iowa’s nursing home owners she was “locked, loaded and ready to go” in opposing that year’s cameras-in-nursing-homes bill.

“This is something we’ve opposed for many, many years,” Bentrott told IHCA members on a call the association recorded and later uploaded to its website. She said she was able to persuade a committee chairman to spike the bill and prevent it from moving forward.

“I’m happy to say that yesterday we were able to kill that legislation,” Bentrott said in the call. “That is good news. That was on the House side of things. The bill never had legs in the Senate. We talked to them very early on and we were able to get them to a point where they agreed that camera legislation was not something that they would make an issue this year. So, we were confident we would be able to kill the bill in the Senate, but we didn’t even want it to get to a subcommittee in the House and we were successful in preventing that from happening. So that is a big win.”

During a subsequent call, Bentrott warned the IHCA members that the camera legislation was likely to come up again in the future. “This is something that will probably come up every single year,” she said. “Best case scenario is that we kill it before it even gets any legs.”

This year, the Iowa Health Care Association is not officially registered as lobbying lawmakers on either the House or Senate version of the camera-in-nursing-homes bill.

However, IHCA was never registered as opposing the 2023 bill, either — despite Bentrott’s admission that she had actively and successfully lobbied lawmakers in an effort to “kill” the legislation.

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Camera captures theft in Iowa nursing home, but legislation on the issue remains stalled