Keith Johnson fell and couldn't get up during a morning walk with his dog, Gita. The loyal canine knew her owner was in trouble and ran down to a main road looking for help. Washington Deputy Colton Wright ran right behind Gita and found Johnson unable to get up with a broken hip. The deputy went back to the man's truck to get a bottle of water and Gita was right there. Now, the beloved pet is being hailed a hero.
Source:
Hero Dog Saves Man's Life After He Falls and Breaks His Hip
By Tammy Kaufman
Bingen/Goldendale, Washington (May 22, 2024) - The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) recently released an analysis based on Bank Secrecy Act reports that indicate in a one-year period, from 2022 to 2023, financial institutions reported roughly $27 billion in suspicious activity related to elder financial exploitation. The April 18, 2024 article from the American Bankers Association (ABA) Banking Journal noted that 80% of all suspicious activity reported by banks involved elder scams.
Elder Abuse Awareness Day is recognized annually worldwide on June 15, bringing attention to issues affecting this vulnerable population. Financial exploitation is one of many concerns surrounding elder abuse. Other common types include physical abuse, neglect, and abandonment.
Over the past few years, financial exploitation has drawn a lot of attention as scammers target the senior population with telephone and computer scams that include using fear strategies, investment promises, IRS cons, and many other tactics. The day of awareness is an important reminder of the crucial role families and communities play in helping safeguard elders against physical, emotional, and financial abuse.
Elder financial exploitation is illegal and considered to be the unauthorized or improper use of an older person’s funds, property, or assets. This common crime deprives many seniors of their lifelong hard-earned assets. Perpetrators are not only strangers but also can be family members, friends, neighbors, or caregivers.
The National Institute on Aging’s webpage has a current list of common scams that are targeting the elderly population, including:
Government impersonator scams, such as someone posing as a Medicare representative asking for account information
Fake prizes, sweepstakes, and lottery scams, in which you are asked to pay money or provide account information to claim winnings
Computer tech support scams, in which a scammer tells you that your computer has a problem and wants you to pay for support services to fix it
The grandparent scam, in which a caller pretends to be a grandchild or other relative in distress.
It is important to watch for red flags in order to prevent a loved one from being burdened by financial exploitation. The American Bankers Association webpage shares the following as tips to help prevent financial exploitation:
Shred receipts, bank statements, and unused credit card offers before throwing them away.
Lock up your checkbook, account statements, and other sensitive information when others will be in your home.
Regularly review your credit report. Never give personal information, including Social Security Number, account number, or other financial information, to anyone over the phone unless you initiated the call and trust the other party.
Never pay a fee or taxes to collect sweepstakes or lottery “winnings.”
Never rush into a financial decision. Ask for details in writing and get a second opinion.
Consult with a financial advisor or attorney before signing any document you don’t understand.
Get to know your banker and build a relationship with the people who handle your finances. They can look out for any suspicious activity related to your account.
Check references and credentials before hiring anyone. Don’t allow workers to have access to information about your finances.
Pay with credit cards instead of cash to keep a paper trail.
You have the right not to be threatened or intimidated. If you think someone close to you is trying to take control of your finances, call your local Adult Protective Services and tell someone at your bank.
Trust your instincts. Exploiters are often very skilled. They can be charming and forceful in their efforts to convince you to give up control of your finances. Don’t be fooled—if something doesn’t feel right, it may not be right. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
If you or someone you know is suffering from any form of Elder abuse, don’t hesitate to make a report to the Washington State Adult Protective Services intake line at 1-877-734-6277 or call the National Elder Fraud Hotline at 833–372–8311.
To contact a local advocate, please reach out to Programs for Peaceful Living at 509-493-2662 or go to http://wagap.org to learn more about assistance available throughout Klickitat County to support seniors and vulnerable populations.
More details on the FinCEN analysis can be found at https://www.fincen.gov/news/news- releases/fincen-issues-analysis-elder-financial-exploitation.
Full Article & Source:
$27B Reported in Elder Financial Exploitation
By Laurel Demkovich
Washington needs to do more to keep people from staying at hospitals longer than medically necessary, state health officials told lawmakers this week.
Over the last five years, the Legislature has approved spending and policy changes to help shorten stays for “complex discharge” patients – those who are in hospitals but cannot be discharged to a long-term care or behavioral health facility for a variety of complicated reasons.
In 2020, the average length of stay was 57 days for patients who were referred to the state for long-term support and Medicaid funding, compared to 32 days this year.
But Bea Rector, assistant secretary for aging and long-term support at the Department of Social and Health Services, says 32 days is still too long.
Rector told a state House of Representatives committee on Tuesday that she doesn’t know what the “magic number” is for the average length of hospital stays, but the goal should be to not have patients admitted longer than they need to be for medical care.
Washington hospitals have pushed lawmakers to change state law and invest more in services to help discharge patients who end up stuck in their facilities, furthering strain on already stretched systems. The problem was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which in many ways pushed hospitals to the brink.
The Legislature has responded by increasing investments to expand staff at the Department of Social and Health Services and by creating a pilot program that lets the state assist in assigning guardians for certain Medicaid patients, an issue that can be a roadblock to getting people discharged from hospitals.
Lawmakers also funded payments to hospitals for services like labs and scans that wouldn’t otherwise be covered by a daily rate that Medicaid pays for complex discharge patients.
Additionally, the Legislature set aside more than $20 million over the next two years to establish a task force focused on solving challenges related to complex discharge patients.
The group, which is made up of representatives from the Governor’s Office, the Health Care Authority, the Washington State Hospital Association and others, is initially working with five hospitals, most in western Washington. Its goals include improving access to services, further decreasing patients’ lengths of stay and reducing readmissions.
Despite lawmakers’ efforts, the Health Care Authority estimates about one in five patients in Washington hospitals are stuck because of some kind of barrier complicating their release, said Glory Dole, Medicaid contracts and compliance manager at the Washington State Health Care Authority. Those barriers can include substance use disorders, mental health concerns, homelessness, or medical needs like kidney dialysis.
“When folks are stuck in hospitals, it’s really an access issue,” Dole told the House Appropriations Committee.
In the 2024 legislative session, the Department of Social and Health Services is asking for funding to hire additional home and community services case management workers, which can help speed up the discharge process. They are also asking for funding to support specialized training and rate increases for those working in residential treatment facilities and funding to increase provider rates for those working with assisted living and dementia care clients.
“All of those things are designed to continue to get the right set of services and supports in place to serve the most complex client,” Rector said.
But there are other obstacles. These include workforce shortages in medical and caregiving fields as well as a lack of families planning for long-term care and power of attorney decisions.
Guardian requirement roadblocks
One issue for a small portion of
complex discharge patients is how long it can take them to get a
state-appointed guardian. For people with dementia or severe mental
health disorders, this can be required for them to move to care
facilities beyond a hospital.
Hospitals have also criticized the state in recent months for a new interpretation of its guardianship law. In the fall of 2020, the state Department of Social and Health Services clarified that the law says patients’ family members, or others who have designated powers of attorney, could only make choices about health care for people unfit to make decisions on their own. But this does not cover decisions about long-term care.
In those situations, a state-appointed guardian is often the only answer to getting a patient properly discharged from a hospital.
The list of people awaiting a guardian is very short, Rector said, but the number of days they are in a hospital can be very long.
“The guardianship process at its fastest still takes months to complete,” she said.
One solution the state had to the guardianship problem was a pilot program the Legislature funded last year for people in hospitals who are unable to make informed decisions for themselves. It allows the state to assist in assigning a guardian for Medicaid patients who meet certain criteria.
Though the pilot program has led to more referrals to the state Office of Public Guardianship and better communication between the state and hospitals, Rector said there may be more work by advocates in the upcoming legislative session to improve the state guardian law.
Full Article & Source:
Patients stuck in Washington hospitals pose quandary for state lawmakers
For Linda Long, who has worked in nursing homes since 1997, at the same facility outside of Tacoma, Washington, since 2003, understaffing has always been a problem.
It only got worse during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she said co-workers were leaving due to the short staffing, constant Covid outbreaks and the immense workloads that staff were left with to fill in the void.
But, workers and labor experts say, short-staffing in the crucial US industry has persisted after the pandemic, with grave impacts on patient care and residents’ wellbeing, and spiraling burnout that has become pervasive in the care industry.
“Most of the time, I want to cry when I see things and I can’t do any more than I can do,” said Long. “There are times when we have extra people and we’re jumping for joy because I know the residents will have somebody to talk to, but in general we are still short-staffed, which means you look at the residents every day thinking. ‘Oh my God, how am I going to do this for them today?’”
Long said that the care many residents need has to be done by multiple people at a time, such as operating lifts to raise patients in and out of bed to bathe, to eat and to be active, and oftentimes nursing aides aren’t available to help complete these tasks. The short-staffing often results in workers skipping their breaks and lunches, and cutting corners wherever they can to save time so they can attend to every resident.
She described the heartbreaking daily experiences she and other workers face when residents are weary about asking staff to help them with something because they see how short-staffed and overworked they are at the facility. And if tasks are skipped or missed, residents’ conditions can quickly deteriorate.
“Showers aren’t being done all the time because we can’t always get to it,” added Long. “People will lose the ability to walk, the ability to sit up, to do a range of motions, and that has a lot to do with being shorthanded because they don’t get any of the basic care they need.”
The Biden administration and labor groups are hoping for change. The US Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed a rule to implement minimum staffing standards in long-term care facilities, with the public comment period ending on 6 November. If implemented, it would be the first ever minimum federal staffing standard for nursing homes that care for 1.2 million people.
Under the proposed rule, the CMS estimates 75% of facilities would have to improve staffing in their facilities. The rule would require nursing homes to provide residents with a minimum of 0.55 hours of care from a registered nurse per resident per day and 2.45 hours of care from a nurse aide per resident every day.
More than 50 unions, worker groups and organizations signed on to a letter in support of federal minimum staffing levels in nursing homes, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the AFL-CIO and MomsRising.
“Our country’s long-term care system is in the midst of a catastrophic crisis, and nursing home workers and residents have suffered unspeakable consequences. In the absence of a federal staffing standard, nursing home workers have endured complete physical, mental and emotional exhaustion due to understaffed shifts and unsafe working conditions, and nursing home residents have been robbed of the quality care and quality of life they deserve,” said the SEIU president, Mary Kay Henry, in a statement supporting the standard.
But several nursing home CEOs have written public comments to oppose the rule, claiming it’s not feasible due to costs and labor shortages, with many workers and family members of residents writing in support of the rule or calling to strengthen it.
The nursing home industry is a multibillion-dollar industry with about 70% of nursing homes operating as for-profit facilities. In recent years, private equity firms have increased their ownership or stake in nursing homes, with research demonstrating that private equity ownership results in worse health outcomes.
Tina Siegel has worked as a licensed practical nurse in a nursing home in Erie, Pennsylvania, for 38 years, where she says staffing shortages have always been an issue in the industry but have worsened during the pandemic.
Earlier this year, Pennsylvania enacted statewide staff-to-patient ratios for nursing homes amid pushes from workers like Siegel, which she says have helped to improve staffing issues. She said the ratios are needed nationwide to improve working conditions for staff and the care and dignity that nursing home residents deserve.
“We feel really connected
to our residents. We take care of them, some of them we’re the only
family they have. We’re there when they’re passing away, and you want to
spend time with them because you’re the only person there, but a lot of
times you don’t have time to do that either. So … you feel bad because
in their last moments of their life, they’re by themselves and that
shouldn’t happen to people,” said Siegel.
Full Article & Source:
US nursing home workers face ‘catastrophic crisis’ of understaffing
by Kimberly Bonvissuto
The Long Term Care Community Coalition hosted a webinar Tuesday that included AARP Foundation Litigation, a charitable nonprofit arm of the AARP that focuses on civil rights cases, abuse and neglect in senior living communities and skilled nursing facilities. The group advocates for systemic change in federal and state courts to “change the circumstances that give rise to poor care,” AARP Foundation Litigation Vice President Kelly Bagby said.
Benjamin Davis, AARP Foundation Litigation senior attorney, said an issue arises when operators promise to provide a sufficient level of staffing but residents and their families mistakenly believe that that promise means that their loved ones will receive individualized care. The dynamics of senior living communities and skilled nursing facilities, he said, mean that staff members are devoted to all residents, not individuals.
The result, Davis said, is that providers make promises to attract residents but then don’t meet resident needs or effectively reassess residents to determine their changing needs.
Davis highlighted a current case against Chancellor Senior Management, a Columbus, OH-based organization that manages four assisted living communities in the state. The lawsuit alleges that Chancellor used a formula to determine the hours of care that each resident needed based on their individual conditions but only applied that formula for billing purposes, not to determine staffing levels. The lawsuit further alleges that staffing decisions are made at the corporate headquarters rather than at the community level.
The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia opened the door for the case to move to a class action lawsuit, Davis said. The court also further declared that the provider’s arbitration agreements in resident admission contracts were unenforceable because they were part of a larger contract rather than a stand-alone agreement. The American Health Law Association requirements incorporated into those agreements call for them to be stand-alone agreements.
Bagby referenced a federal class action case against Brookdale Senior Living filed in 2020. The lawsuit accuses the country’s largest senior living company, based in Brentwood, TN, of “chronically insufficient staffing” at its communities, allegedly to meet financial benchmarks. The lawsuit also accuses Brookdale of misleading residents and families and of failing to provide care and services.
“Our cases are about how to force companies to change their practices around adequate staffing,” Bagby said, adding that attorneys are focusing on violations of the consumer protection statutes that allow residents to recover damages for injuries when companies do not deliver on their promises. “In every assisted living and nursing facility, the residency agreement lays out those promises to residents,” she said.
Bagby said that it is critical for providers to be transparent about their practices and to not lie about their staffing levels.
Class action lawsuits against senior living providers related to staffing levels are not a recent phenomenon.
In 2021, for example, Aegis Living of Bellevue, WA, settled two class action lawsuits for a combined $16.25 million. The lawsuits alleged that Aegis based staffing levels on predetermined staffing budgets rather than on resident care needs and in doing so violated elder abuse and consumer protection laws.
Similar legal action against other senior living companies also resulted in settlements.
For instance, the former Emeritus Corp., which merged with Brookdale in 2014, settled a class action lawsuit in 2016 for $13.5 million. The suit alleged that Emeritus misled assisted living residents about the use of a computerized system to evaluate residents and determine sufficient staffing and care levels.
Atria Senior Living settled a similar lawsuit for $6.4 million that same year, and Oakmont Senior Living settled a class action lawsuit for $9 million earlier this year. A similar lawsuit against Sunrise Senior Living is pending.
Last fall, Argentum, the American Seniors Housing Association and the
California Assisted Living Association filed an amicus brief in the
Sunrise case, arguing that class actions are “unnecessary and
counterproductive” because assisted living communities are highly
motivated to provide quality care to residents. The brief also argued
that the expense and disruption of defending class action suits diverts
resources from care provision.
Full Article & Source:
Understaffing is driving force behind lawsuits against senior living communities, legal experts say
By LAUREL DEMKOVICH
 |
| The number of patients awaiting state-appointed guardians to be discharged is up, adding pressure to the health care system and raising difficult ethical issues. (iStock.com) |
The Washington State Hospital Association estimates that roughly 10% of the state’s hospital beds are occupied by patients who have barriers to being discharged. Among them, a subset, often around 100 people, are awaiting a guardian to make a decision on where they should go next, such as a long-term care facility.
But that process is long and complicated, and there aren’t enough people willing to take on the guardianship role for patients in these circumstances, who can have conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, brain injuries, or severe mental health disorders.
Appointing a guardian can often take between three to six months. It’s time-consuming in part because it is highly sensitive, usurping an individual’s decision-making power.
“People end up losing most, if not all, of their legal rights simply to get discharged from the hospital,” Amy Spitzer, an attorney at Fox Ballard in Seattle, said during a meeting where state lawmakers discussed the issue this week.
The Legislature is trying to come up with improvements.
“The bureaucracy takes so long to get guardianship that patients are left in an inappropriate setting,” state Sen. Keith Wagoner, R-Sedro Woolley, said at a Senate Law and Justice Committee work session.
The state Department of Social and Health Services’ Aging and Long-Term Support Administration gets about 200 referrals each week for people who need to transition from hospitals to other types of settings. About 175 of those are typically resolved within the week, said Bea Rector, assistant secretary at the department.
Rector said an “overwhelming” number of people in these situations can make decisions or express opinions on what they want, but a small number do not have that ability and need an appointed guardian.
Spitzer, the attorney, said the number of guardianship cases her firm has taken has increased by about 30% since 2020. In the first six months of this year, she said her firm has dealt with 250 guardianship cases.
Overall in Washington, there are between 11,100 and 12,300 hospital beds available to the general public, the Washington State Hospital Association estimates.
One solution to getting people out of hospitals faster could be reinterpreting the state’s surrogate decision-maker law, which dictates who can make decisions for patients who are unable to.
In the fall of 2020, the state Department of Social and Health Services clarified that the law says patients’ family members, or others who have designated powers of attorney, could only make choices about health care for people unfit to make decisions on their own. But this does not cover decisions about long-term care.
The effect is that for many patients in these difficult situations, having a state-appointed guardian is the only option for getting discharged from the hospital, said Zosia Stanley, vice president and associate general counsel at the state hospital association.
Rector said the change in the interpretation of the law came from federal regulations surrounding Medicaid, which are out of the state’s control.
She added there are likely other reasons why there are so many patients waiting to be discharged from Washington’s hospitals. The pandemic, for example, made it more difficult for people to transition directly into a nursing home from a hospital because the facilities were closed or staffing was short, she said.
Another option that could help is to speed up the guardianship process.
A bill introduced by Wagoner last session would allow courts to order patients to be discharged from hospitals and into the appropriate long-term care setting while they are going through the guardianship appointment process. It’s an attempt to get patients who are waiting to be discharged out of the hospital sooner, he said.
The bill did not get a committee hearing, but Wagoner said it was mostly due to time constraints.
The process outlined in the bill would remove a requirement that a patient must be an “immediate danger to themselves” before a guardian can be appointed, which Rector said can be hard to prove if someone is safe in a hospital.
But Amy Freeman, attorney at the Washington State Long-Term Care Ombudsman program, said that standard is essential because guardianship is an “extraordinary measure” often used with the state’s most vulnerable people.
She described the bill as abandoning too many protections for people going through the process.
Freeman said the state needs to let new spending approved in recent years take effect before lawmakers think about changing the guardianship process.
The Legislature last year funded a pilot project for people in hospitals who are unable to make informed decisions for themselves. It allows the state to assist in assigning a guardian for Medicaid patients who meet certain criteria.
The program serves a maximum of 60 people at a time. More than 81% of the cases that were accepted into the pilot program have already successfully been appointed a guardian, according to the department.
Rector said the pilot program has been good for the people who qualify and who would otherwise be still in a hospital as opposed to a long-term care facility, but she said it’s only a small portion of the people who need help.
Panelists at the Law and Justice committee meeting gave lawmakers
other suggestions for addressing the problem, including expanding
funding for the Office of Public Guardianship, which is a state-run
program that offers surrogate decision-makers to low-income people,
expanding training and support for family members who take on a guardian
role, or increasing resources for professional guardians, who currently
don’t get paid more than $235 a month.
Full Article & Source:
For those unfit to make decisions, a complex path out of the hospital in Washington
An investigation is closing in on four men accused of posing as federal officers to rob an elderly woman at gunpoint.
Source:
Suspects pose as law enforcement to rob elderly woman | FOX 13 Seattle
On Thursday, February 16th, the Washington Department of Health releases the names of ten registered nurses (RNs) that have failed to provide adequate qualifications for licensure. In addition, denied the applications of four individuals that had qualifications from schools involved in the Florida nursing school scandal.
The announcement over the arrests of 25 individuals in the fake nursing diploma and certificate scandal rocked the nursing profession. As the weeks go by, more information is being released as the names of those nurses involved.
The Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission (NCQAC) released the statement indicating it would be taking non-disciplinary action and rescinding RN licenses immediately. According to their website, the NCQAC’s mission is to “protects the public's health and safety by regulating the competency and quality of licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, advanced registered nurse practitioners and nursing technicians. The purpose of the NCQAC includes establishing, monitoring, and enforcing licensing, consistent standards of practice, continuing competency mechanisms, and discipline.”
Employers are encouraged to verify nursing licenses through the state’s verification portal and/or contact the state board of nursing.
Washington is still currently investigating others that could
possibly be involved in the nursing school scandal and will continue to
inform the public as more information becomes available. For those
applying for Washington nursing licenses with documented education from a
Florida-based nursing program, additional information and documents are
being requested.
Full Article & Source:
14 Names of Nurse Licenses Connected To FL Fake Nursing Diploma Scheme Released in WA
 |
| MultiCare Deaconess Hospital in Spokane. Many hospitals statewide, including most on the west side, are over 100% capacity. Although hospitals in Eastern Washington have not reached the same levels yet, hospital leaders say they could soon, with many currently around 95% capacity. (DAN PELLE/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW) |
OLYMPIA – The Washington State Hospital Association is asking the state for help in addressing “unprecedented” capacity issues at hospitals.
Many hospitals statewide, including most on the west side, are over 100% capacity. Although hospitals in Eastern Washington have not reached the same levels yet, hospital leaders say they could soon, with many currently around 95% capacity.
The issue isn’t COVID, at least not directly. What’s causing the back up is a mixture of lack of staff and available beds and the continued challenge to transition patients into long-term care facilities. Current guardianship law in Washington requires a family member with legal guardianship to sign off before moving a patient out of a hospital. If no family member is available, the patient can use a court-appointed guardian, but that can take time as there are only so many guardians available in the state.
“We have solutions that we know will decant the system, and we need to make sure those strategies are being deployed as quickly as they can be,” said Taya Briley, the association’s executive vice president.
The hospital association is again urging state leaders to change guardianship requirements for those needing to move to long-term care, fund bed readiness programs statewide, expand rapid response teams for long-term care facilities and increase support for child and adult respite services.
Briley said there are indications that progress may be made on the capacity issues “in the days and weeks ahead.”
Mike Faulk, spokesman for Gov. Jay Inslee’s office, said additional steps to address capacity likely will take legislative action.
“The governor’s office has been working on a number of these issues for a long time,” Faulk wrote in an email.
He said the governor’s office is actively engaged with legislators on the issue of bed readiness, incentives for discharging challenging patients and rapid response teams. He said their data does not point to a lack of guardianship as a significant barrier.
While the problem is not directly linked to COVID, already full hospitals are not helped by an increase of COVID cases, said Dr. Steve Mitchell, medical director of the Washington Medical Coordination Center.
“Many of our hospitals, especially on the West Side, are more strained today than really at any other point since the pandemic began,” Mitchell said.
When large hospitals in the state experience overcapacity, it hurts rural hospitals because their patients can’t be transferred to larger hospitals, Mitchell said.
Though there is some COVID-19 element, Dr. David O’Brien, at MultiCare South Sound Region, said it’s mostly caused by a demand for general medical care and a lack of beds and staff for those people.
Many hospitals have patients they could discharge to long-term care facilities or adult family homes but cannot because finding a guardian for patients can take time.
Kristy Carrington, regional chief nursing officer at Providence Swedish, said about 17% of their patients no longer require hospital care but can’t be transferred to a long-term care facility.
The hospital association has continued to ask the state to change its interpretation of the guardianship law to allow family members who are not guardians to make decisions, which could make the process move more quickly.
“We are unique in the nation in taking this position,” Briley said. “And we are feeling that pain across our health care system.”
The change in the guardianship process could come from the state reviewing legal briefings and changing its interpretation, or it could mean a legislative change, which likely couldn’t happen until the Legislature is back in session in January.
The hospital association supported a bill last session that would have eased the guardianship process some, but it did not pass.
In January, Inslee said he did not have the authority alone to change the law. Instead, he brought in another 75 guardians to help patients who may need someone to sign off to their moving to a different facility.
In addition to the guardianship issue, both hospitals and long-term care facilities are experiencing staffing shortages and a lack of funding, making it harder to transition patients to those facilities.
The state hospital association is asking for funding to allow hospitals and long-term care facilities to stand up programs to help patients who need long-term care beds.
It helps the post-acute care facilities get a bit more reimbursement for patients that need a bit more help, Briley said.
The association is also asking the state to expand rapid response teams to help provide extra staffing to long-term care facilities, which Briley said have experienced significant staffing challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lastly, the association is asking the state to expand support for child and adult respite services, which Briley said is a population that can be challenging to care for and often needs additional staffing and funding.
The requests from the hospital association are immediate fixes, said Alyssa Odegaard, of LeadingAge Washington, which helps organizations dedicated to aging individuals. But there are long-term solutions that are needed as well, such as increasing wages and expanding training for those at skilled nursing facilities.
ISSAQUAH, Wash. - FOX 13 has uncovered what appears to be an uncommon and particularly cruel form of potential elder abuse in one of our communities.
A weeks-long investigation found mistreatment that wasn’t physical but instead appears to have been financially exploitative, with victims sharing accounts of emotional manipulation by the same man.
One of the victims is a beloved 80-year-old man from Issaquah, whom many in town know for the decades he served as the owner of Lewis Hardware.
"I didn’t realize what he was doing until it was too late," said Steve White, who is also known as Homer.
White’s stepsons, Kevin and Jim Carey, said White is known to be an incredibly kind person, very outgoing and someone who will help everybody.
The brothers said a man named Steven Dempsey came off as harmless in the beginning, but soon the family started noticing some red flags.
"Steve Dempsey just came in here and made out to be everybody’s best friend. He’s very good at being everybody’s friend, as a lot of people who do what he does, kind of gain your trust right away," said Jim. "He definitely knew what he was doing, and he was working angles to get in to live here, which is ultimately what he was able to do. There was a whole new bed made up and belongings, and so it was obvious that somebody was staying there, and my brother asked my stepdad, ‘He’s not living here is he?’ and my stepdad said, ‘No, he’s just sleeping here.’"
The family said Dempsey first offered to chop up a fallen tree in exchange for the firewood, and proceeded to do other odd jobs around the property.
Now, White's home has a ripped-up sidewalk, a large pile of wood and tree limbs in the back, a makeshift fence and a set of stairs leading up a tree.
Kevin called Issaquah Police, and officers said the family would have to evict Dempsey, since he had taken tenancy inside the home.
The family said Dempsey moved himself into White's home in mid-January and refused to leave until the family evicted him a month later.
"According to my stepdad, he said he only gave Dempsey the debit card twice to go get food, and we had to tell him, we went through the bank record and said ‘look at it, no, he was up at the casino, you know, Snoqualmie drawing out money multiple times in the same day,’" said Jim. "So we don’t know if he was just taking and gambling away, or he was just taking it out in increments and keeping the money."
"You’ve gotten in here and gotten a hold of my stepdad‘s finances to some degree, locked my brother and my phone from my stepdad‘s phone, trying to isolate us from him. So he could try and move in and take control of the property and the house and live off of my stepdad‘s money," said Kevin. "Once we got him removed, and we were able to get back in the house, we found my stepdad’s pills that he has to take were kind of hidden in the back counter underneath some stuff, so he hadn’t been taking them for probably the better part of a month," said Kevin.
White has been diagnosed with early stages of dementia, which we learned is common in elder abuse cases.
"I think the two most common factors we see in people who are victimized are dementia and social isolation," said Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Page Ulrey of the King County Prosecutor’s Office. "Often we see gambling addiction and spending addiction is sort of driving the exploitation."
Ulrey has dedicated the last two decades of her career as an elder abuse prosecutor in King County.
She said cases historically across the U.S. have been underreported and under prosecuted and that for every one case of elder abuse that occurs another 23 never come to light.
Studies have also found that any form of elder abuse increases the risk of premature death of the victim by 300%
"The betrayal they feel, it’s just incredibly devastating, and they also don’t have the ability to get that money back. They can’t start over again and get a new job and start saving. They’re retired, they have no additional sources of income, and they’ve lost everything to someone they thought they could trust," said Ulrey.
Carol Sullivan, 74, thought she could trust Dempsey as well.
"I wrote everything that he had done and how I was afraid of him, I really was," said Sullivan. "He acts like he’s going to do all this stuff for you, ‘oh, let me do that, let me do that,’ and then the next thing you know he’s taking from you."
Sullivan filed for a protection order against Dempsey in 2021. In the filing, she claims Dempsey threatened to kill a dog they were watching, stabbed a friend of theirs on the forehead and that he stole from them and brought stolen items to their places.
In fact, Sullivan said Dempsey brought rare, old coins to her home that had gone missing from White's house.
Sullivan evicted Dempsey at the end of 2021 and said it appears he targeted White next.
White’s family successfully filed a five-year vulnerable adult protection order against Dempsey, and FOX 13 News has talked to at least one other couple in Issaquah who said Dempsey stole from them as well.
Dempsey is not currently facing any criminal charges. FOX 13 has reached out to Issaquah Police, who say the case involving Dempsey's encounters with White is an open investigation.
"I would urge them to report it to the police," said Ulrey. "It’s a crime to financially exploit someone. It’s a crime to physically abuse someone, obviously, or abuse them in any way."
Common signs of elder abuse, neglect and exploitation can include:
Ulrey said it’s important to maintain strong connections with the older people in your life.
She also recommends having more than one person or family member managing the finances of older loved ones.
"If anybody has any vulnerable parents at home, really keep an eye on them and ask them questions, because there’s other people out there like Dempsey who are trying to take advantage of people," said Jim.
"It’s the most common refrain I hear from the victims I work with, that they feel ashamed or they feel stupid, and it just breaks my heart to hear that," said Ulrey. "What I would say to them is, this is not your fault, this is their fault. You did nothing wrong."
The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office launched a joint venture with Aging and Disability Services and Adult Protective Services to establish the King County Elder Abuse Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) in 2019.
The MDT strengthens ties between many agencies to respond to reports of elder abuse by bringing together professionals across disciplines to improve the system response to cases of elder abuse, neglect and financial exploitation in King County.
Ulrey said if you suspect abuse, call 911 and report it to police. She also recommends getting in touch with Adult Protective Services, which investigates and helps with protective orders and guardianships.
She also recommends the agency Sound Generations which offers resources, and will do intakes and referrals for cases. Their phone number is 206-448-3110.
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| Andrew Simmons, right, blows bubbles with his father Bo last spring. Andrew, who's profoundly autistic and mostly non-verbal, lives in a supported living home in Snohomish County operated by Aacres WA, a troubled state contractor. Bo Simmons says conditions in the home over the past year have deteriorated to the point of being dangerous for Andrew and his housemates. |
In February of this year, Leigh Anne Francisco’s severely autistic 21-year-old son Angus moved into a home for people with developmental disabilities operated by Aacres WA, LLC in Snohomish County.
Almost immediately, Francisco grew concerned about conditions in the home.
First, she noticed mysterious bruises on her son, including a large dark purple one on his inner thigh.
Then Angus and his housemate were left unsupervised one night because the overnight staff member never showed up.
There were other issues too.
Francisco said Angus was overfed and rarely taken out for a walk or to kick a soccer ball into the net she had set up for him in the backyard. He quickly gained 30 pounds.
When she visited, Francisco said she often found Angus’ hygiene had been neglected. The condition of the house also dismayed her — food and garbage on the floor, shampoo and toothpaste spilled in the bathroom. To make matters worse, Francisco said the staff was often “lounging around and on their phones.”
There were also medication errors. By September of this year, Francisco was frantic and trying to get Angus moved out of Aacres’ care.
“This is not what I had imagined for my son!” Francisco wrote in an email summarizing her concerns.
Francisco is one of two parents who, independently of each other, contacted the public radio Northwest News Network in September regarding concerns about Aacres in Snohomish County. The second was Bo Simmons whose 23-year-old son Andrew is also profoundly autistic and lives with three other Aacres clients in a home in Lynnwood.
In his message to the Northwest News Network, Simmons said Aacres was “very much not living up to expectations as a residential care provider for the state.”
“We’re talking about a serious burn which was never communicated to us, repeated times where there is a single staff member for four residents, never taking our son out into the community,” Simmons wrote.
In recent weeks, the parents’ pleas for oversight and accountability have reached state regulators who say they’re now investigating the company’s Snohomish County operations.
The complaints are just the latest against Aacres, a long-troubled care provider that currently has contracts with Washington’s Developmental Disabilities Administration (DDA) to provide in-home support to developmentally disabled clients in Clark, Pierce, Thurston, as well as Snohomish Counties.
In 2019, DSHS cancelled three contracts it had with Aacres WA to provide care for vulnerable clients in Spokane County. DDA said it took the action “based on serious non-compliance with the law and regulations.”
One of the contracts was terminated following the death of a client who was given household cleaning vinegar in lieu of colonoscopy prep medication. A former Aacres caregiver was subsequently charged with third-degree assault, and reckless endangerment in connection with the death. Her trial is scheduled for January.
In a statement at the time, the then-assistant secretary of DDA, Evelyn Perez, said: “We have lost confidence in Aacres Spokane. Not being in compliance with regulations and ensuring the health and safety of our clients is unacceptable.”
Previously, Aacres had also operated in King County. But in November 2018, Aacres announced it was pulling out of King County because of a lack of affordable housing and challenges related to recruiting and retaining staff. The move came after the state had put the company’s King County operation on 90-day provisional status for failing to correct serious deficiencies that "jeopardized clients' health, safety and welfare."
Nevertheless, DDA allowed Aacres to continue serving vulnerable clients elsewhere in Washington under separate contracts with the state.
Records show that during the 2019 to 2021 biennial budget, Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) paid Aacres more than $92 million making it the agency’s seventh largest contractor. So far this budget cycle, which started July 1, state payments to Aacres total $16.3 million.
As of the end of 2020, Aacres served approximately 220 clients across the four counties, according to DDA.
Founded in 1974, Aacres is one of several human services companies operated by Spokane-based Embassy Management, LLC. According to the website for Bregal Partners, a New York private equity fund, Embassy is one of its portfolio companies.
Aacres and Embassy Management did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In previous statements, the company has said that shortcomings in care “in no way reflects our passion, commitment and resolve to our mission to safely serve individuals in their homes and communities.”
Historically, people with developmental disabilities in Washington were served in state institutions known as Residential Habilitation Centers. But over the decades those facilities have downsized as part of a state and national shift to serving individuals in the community.
DDA’s largest community residential program for people with developmental disabilities and significant support needs is called Supported Living Services.
Today, roughly 140 supported living agencies, including Aacres, serve about 4,600 clients who qualify for DDA services.
Under the program, clients live in their own home with up to three other housemates while being supported, often around-the-clock, by agency staff.
The clients pay for rent, food and other expenses while the state’s Medicaid program covers the cost of the support staff. In 2020, Washington’s supported living expenditures were $768 million, according to DDA. That included a temporary COVID-19 rate increase for contracted agencies paid for with federal relief dollars.
But Scott Livengood, the legislative chair for the state’s Community Residential Services Association, said the industry has not caught back up since rates were cut during the Great Recession.
“Due to funding increases not keeping pace with the cost of living and the steady increase in our statewide minimum wage, the average starting wage for a [direct support professional] is now around $15 per hour, which is only 5% above the statewide minimum wage [that takes effect] next month and 25% below a self-sufficient wage,” Livengood said in a statement.
As a result, he said, most frontline support staff work two to three jobs and average turnover in the industry is about 50 percent. Livengood estimated the current vacancy rate is approaching 20 percent as agencies lose workers faster than they can hire them.
“The pandemic has made the situation even worse, as we are competing with fast food and retail jobs offering $18 to $20, along with attractive benefit packages and hiring bonuses,” said Livengood who is also CEO of Alpha Supported Living Services, a nonprofit serving clients in King, Snohomish and Spokane counties.
To try to slow the attrition, supported living agencies have offered signing bonuses and “hazard pay” during the pandemic. But the federal stimulus dollars that funded those enhancements are scheduled to expire at the end of the year making it even harder to recruit new employees, Livengood said.
It’s not just the pay, but the nature of the work that makes finding and keeping employees difficult. Staff are often required to work nights and weekends. And the clients can exhibit challenging and even violent behaviors.
In the past, Aacres has pointed to the challenge of recruiting and retaining front-line staff as a factor in its quality of care lapses.
State records show that since 2018 Aacres in Snohomish County has been subject to four inspections, two investigations and one enforcement action.
In January 2019, Aacres was fined $1,000 after the subflooring in one of its Snohomish County homes failed and a client fell into the space below and was injured.
Then in August of this year, an unannounced inspection of Aacres homes in Snohomish County found a number of deficiencies — especially around COVID-19 protocols. Among the findings was that visitors, staff and clients weren’t properly screened for COVID symptoms.
The concerns of family members have also reached state regulators. The state’s Residential Care Services (RCS), a division of DSHS, confirmed to the Northwest News Network that it has active investigations underway into multiple complaints about substandard care at Aacres homes in Snohomish County.
However, Aacres in Snohomish County has not been put on “stop placement” status, where an agency is barred from accepting new clients, or put on provisional certification status which is the last step before decertification.
“If the complaints are found to be substantiated, Aacres, like any other provider, will be held accountable for its deficiencies,” said RCS director Mike Anbesse in a statement.
Aacres isn’t the only supported living agency to draw scrutiny this year. Over the past 11 months, the state has issued 171 citations and 48 statements of deficiency against supported living providers for violations, according to data provided by DDA.
For months, Bo Simmons and his former wife Louise had been uneasy about the care their son Andrew was receiving from Aacres. They noticed staff turnover was high and sometimes there was only one caregiver on duty in the home, despite there being four clients to care for.
Often Andrew would spend much of the day in bed. Occasionally, the staff failed to get him to dental and doctor appointments. He even missed virtual meetings with a job coach.
But concern turned to alarm earlier this year when Louise went to visit Andrew and discovered the palm of his hand had been burned, possibly from touching the stove.
Adding to their distress was the fact no one told them about the injury. Andrew had also not been taken to the doctor for treatment of the burn.
Then, about a month ago, there was another upsetting incident. Andrew, who has migraines and often bangs his head on surfaces because of the pain, slammed his head into a plaster wall in the bathroom. Shortly after that he knocked a staff member to the floor and in the tussle hit his head a second time.
Medics were called to the house. They evaluated Andrew, but did not take him to the hospital. Simmons said the staff was supposed to monitor Andrew for signs of a concussion. Instead, he said, they gave Andrew a sedative and let him go to sleep. When Louise came to visit Andrew that afternoon, she found him in bed soaked in urine.
For Andrew’s parents, that was the last straw.
“He’s a very amazing young man, and he deserves better,” Simmons said tearfully during an interview.
In his desperation, Simmons launched what he described as a “full court press” to bring attention to the plight of his son and other Aacres clients in Snohomish County.
Working closely with Louise, he's urged the state to conduct a “complete review” of Aacres and its parent company, Embassy Management. He's also lobbied DDA to move Andrew to a different supported living provider. And, recently, he retained an attorney who specializes in representing the interests of people with special needs.
In September, Simmons summarized his concerns about Aacres in an email to a top DDA official.
“Andrew has languished in their care,” Simmons wrote. “We suspect that there are many other clients who are not well represented who are in a similar state and we want to advocate for them as well.”
Last month, Simmons followed up with an even more desperate message to DDA’s regional administrator in Snohomish County.
“The situation is dangerous. Seriously dangerous,” Simmons wrote. “The residents and the caregivers are being placed in an extremely unsafe and dangerous environment. It is Aacres management who are to blame for this situation, not the caregivers.”
In response, DDA officials said they’re aware of the concerns.
“I do understand that we are experiencing some challenges right now up in Snohomish County with Aacres,” said Shaw Seaman, DDA’s quality assurance chief.
Seaman said the state is committed to quality improvement and interested in supporting Aacres so that it can get back on track.
Lately, Bo Simmons said he’s seen some signs of progress.
First, DDA dispatched an inspector to visit all of the Aacres homes in Snohomish County to document immediate health and safety hazards. Aacres is now required to submit weekly reports on progress in correcting any deficiencies, according to email communications Simmons shared with the Northwest News Network.
Simmons also met with Aacres management and received assurances that the company would address his concerns. Soon after, Aacres held a retraining session for the staff who work with Andrew.
Aacres management also sent a behavioral clinician and its clinical director to visit Andrew and observe him in his environment. The behavioral clinician plans to continue twice weekly visits with the goal of modeling “for staff how to work with him,” according to an email Aacres’ area director sent Simmons.
Then, on the evening before Thanksgiving, both parents attended a virtual meeting with DDA officials. In a post-meeting email, Simmons said the DDA staff showed “empathy and compassion for our situation.”
The state has also agreed to make a referral for Andrew to a state-operated home for people with developmental disabilities, although there’s no guarantee of a bed being available for him.
Simmons is hopeful Andrew’s care will improve. But he also continues to question whether Aacres is deserving of the $726.28 a day that the state pays the company to care for his son.
“Andrew is most definitely not receiving what the state is paying for,” Simmons wrote in his September email to DDA.
Leigh Anne Francisco, Angus’ mother, also reported her concerns to DDA and RCS, but said months went by before she heard back from anyone. Separately, she was contacted by Adult Protective Services (APS) and provided the investigator with a statement. APS would neither confirm nor deny if it's currently investigating Aacres.
Like Simmons, Francisco also decided that she needed to get Angus moved out of the Aacres home. Her final straw came when her son and his housemate were left unattended overnight earlier this year.
“He’s not safe there, the other roommate is not safe,” Francisco said.
But in the months since, she’s had no luck finding another provider to take him.
“I feel as if I’ve failed as a mother because I haven’t gotten him out of there,” Francisco said.
Francisco recently had a conference call with the new area administrator for Aacres who apologized and told her they want to do better.
Even before that call there were some hopeful signs. The waist-high lawn in front of Angus’ house was finally mowed and damage the residents had done to the walls, which had previously been covered by cardboard, was repaired.
“I’m always cautiously optimistic,” Francisco said: “But
the story that I’ve been given so many times is ‘we’re going to make
this better, we’re so sorry, we’re retraining everybody.'"
Hospital low on oxygen, fears being forced to 'choose who lives or dies'. (KIMA)
YAKIMA, Wash. (KIMA) — Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital says it is afraid of soon hitting a point where it would have to choose who lives or who dies.
The Yakima, Wash. hospital is already having to ration its resources, such as oxygen.
Memorial is monitoring its oxygen consumption and said things could take a turn where it is saved for those the staff knows it can save.Dr. Marty Brueggemann with Memorial says a number of factors could lead the hospital to this point, including staffing shortage getting worse, an increase of COVID-19 patients or more patients who need ventilators.
He added the hospital is getting closer to what’s called "crisis standards of care," which means if you go to the hospital, you might not be chosen to get the care you need.
They may decide that we don’t have the resources to care for you and your chance of survival is low, so we’re not gonna ask if you want to resuscitate or not, we’re just not gonna be able to do it," Brueggemann said.
Additionally, if Memorial reaches this standard of care, they will not have anywhere else to send patients or have any oxygen left.
Dr. Brueggemann said this means, “somebody somewhere is gonna get taken off oxygen and given pain medicine to kind of give them a peaceful death.”
As of now, on average, Memorial sees 30 to 40 patients in the waiting room throughout most of the day, with 10 percent of those leaving without ever being seen by a nurse or a doctor.
Brueggemann said:
That’s a dangerous situation because those patients may have medical problems that require emergency attention that we can’t get to because of the volumes.
Memorial is currently watching its oxygen consumption very closely, adding that one patient’s oxygen requirement rose to a level that pushed the entire unit over its limit recently.
Out
of the 64 Memorial employees that are out due to COVID-related reasons,
11 of those are registered nurses while 10 of them are nursing
assistants.
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| Staffer Laura Iijima-Schergen guides Yoshia Uomoto, 98, back to her room at Nikkei Manor in Seattle on Tuesday. Lindsey Wasson / Reuters |
As the coronavirus pandemic raged, nursing homes and assisted living facilities around the world shut themselves off to visitors in order to protect their vulnerable residents.
That meant that for over a year, Mark Uomoto couldn't see his 98-year-old mom, Yoshia, in person at her Seattle facility except through a window.
"It was hard. She was kind of isolated," Mark told BuzzFeed News. "When I saw her through the window, she was just happy to see me and I was happy to see her, but with her being hard of hearing, it was hard to talk."
Yoshia lives at Nikkei Manor, an assisted living facility primarily designed for Japanese Americans. It shut its doors to visitors on March 23, 2020. The tight restrictions helped ensure no residents contracted COVID-19, according to executive director Theresa McLaughlin, but it's still been tough.
"The pandemic has taken an enormous toll on our staff and residents,” McLaughlin said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.
Residents there have now all been fully vaccinated — so as of Monday, staff have been allowing families to visit with their loved ones, as long as they still wear masks as a precaution.
Mark, who is also fully vaccinated, said he was surprised on Tuesday when he was informed he'd finally be able to visit his mom in person. "I said, 'Yeah! Let's do it!'" he recalled.
When he arrived, he was told that Lindsey Wasson, a photographer with Reuters, would be on hand to capture their reunion.
Meanwhile, a staff member escorted Yoshia back to her room and told her to prepare for a surprise.
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| Lindsey Wasson / Reuters |
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| Lindsey Wasson / Reuters |
"The sense of anticipation was really fun," Wasson, the photographer, told BuzzFeed News.
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| Lindsey Wasson / Reuters |
Yoshia's face said it all.
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| Lindsey Wasson / Reuters |
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| Lindsey Wasson / Reuters |
Photos of the reunion went viral after they were published by Reuters, then shared by NBC News on Twitter on Wednesday.
Mark said he thinks his mom will get a kick out of going viral at 98: "She'll probably laugh and think, Oh, not me!"
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| Lindsey Wasson / Reuters |
"It was definitely nostalgic to be back there for the first time in many years and definitely brings up a lot of feelings of relief for the families," Wasson said. "We are still a long way from the end of the pandemic, but I think it represents a hopeful step towards that direction."
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| Lindsey Wasson / Reuters |
Mark hopes that life continues to normalize for his family and others. He knows how lucky he is to have had the chance to see his mom in person again. The mother of a colleague of his died in a nursing home several months ago before the facilities opened back up. For now, he's counting his blessings — and hugging his mom.
"It felt wonderful. I haven't felt that in over a year," he said. "Knowing I could feel Mom and see Mom, see her smile — it's been a long while."
