'83 years old, unable to speak, unable to fight back.' Daughters share heartbreaking stories of abuse in nursing homes

One daughter asked, "Where was my phone call?" when her mother was suffering.

 

ByAnnika Merrilees 

Guarding Against Elder Abuse

Dan Abrams advises constant contact if physical or financial abuse suspected.

Sonja Fischer was "83 years old, unable to speak, unable to fight back," her daughter, Maya, told lawmakers on Wednesday.

In 2014, a Minneapolis care facility where her mother lived called and said that the Alzheimer's patient had been raped by a male caregiver.

"My final memories of my mother’s life now include watching her bang uncontrollably on her private parts for days after the rape, with tears rolling down her eyes, apparently trying to tell me what had been done to her, but unable to speak," Fischer told members of the Senate Finance Committee during a heartwrenching hearing on protecting the elderly from abuse in nursing homes.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in 2015 the caregiver, George Kpingbah, was sentenced to eight years in prison.

"I still feel the guilt of not being able to take care of her myself and having to entrust her care to others only to have her subjected to this unthinkable assault," Maya Fischer said.

Fischer recalled assuring her mother that she would be safe and that she would not suffer.

"I can never overcome the guilt of realizing that these promises were not kept," Fischer said.

During the hearing, witnesses pointed to a wide array of issues in elder care such as insufficient staffing in care facilities and the challenges families face in determining whether a care facility meets the level of quality they want to provide for their relatives.

"Hardly a week goes by without seeing something about nursing home abuse or neglect in the national news. Every family has a loved one — a mother, a father, or a grandparent — who may someday need nursing home care. That makes this a topic of enormous concern to every American," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee's chairman.

The committee also heard the story of Virginia Olthoff, who died after suffering extreme neglect at an Iowa nursing home, her daughter testified.

According to the Globe Gazette, the nursing home was fined $77,463 for deficiencies in care, including Olthoff's.

Her daughter, Patricia Blank, said that her mother was hospitalized after an overnight nurse reported that Olthoff was moaning around 3 a.m. Blank said when she arrived at the hospital, an emergency room doctor told her that her mother was extremely dehydrated, and had likely suffered a stroke.

The doctor told her he believed Olthoff had been without water or any type of fluid, for at least four or five days, Blank testified.

"Where was my phone call? The report also said she had been crying out in pain often. Where was my phone call then?" Blank asked the committee.

After Wednesday’s hearing, Grassley announced that two government agencies are working on reports on nursing home abuse. He said he plans to hold another hearing on the topic once the reports are released from the Inspector General of Health and Human Services and the Government Accountability Office.

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'83 years old, unable to speak, unable to fight back.' Daughters share heartbreaking stories of abuse in nursing homes

California Agencies Failing to Regulate Mental Health Care Funding and Promptly Investigate Abuse in Nursing Homes, Auditor Finds

By Claudia Boyd-Barrett

Photo credit: iStock.

The California State Auditor condemned three government agencies in a recent report for failing to fix problems with health care programs that serve some of the state’s most vulnerable residents.

In a 61-page report, State Auditor Elaine Howle singled out California’s Department of Health Care Services, the Department of Public Health, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation as having significant problems with health care provision and oversight. These departments are responsible for the health and wellbeing of low-income residents, seniors in nursing homes and incarcerated people, respectively.

Released in January, the report informs the governor and legislators about potential fraud, mismanagement and ineffectiveness in government agencies that, if left unresolved, pose a substantial risk to the state or its residents.

Health Care Services has been slow to improve oversight of how counties manage and spend money for mental health care, the auditor said. In 2018, the auditor found that counties were sitting on $2.5 billion in unspent mental health funds collected from a voter-approved state tax on millionaires. Health Care Services has yet to provide counties with proper guidance on how to spend those funds, and still hasn’t implemented recommended auditing and data collection requirements, the latest report concluded.

The agency also hasn’t done enough to correct problems with how it determines eligibility for Medi-Cal, California’s health insurance program for people with limited incomes, the auditor found. This may have resulted in as much as $1 billion in improper Medi-Cal payments and claims, including some for people who are deceased, the report said. This could put the state on the hook to repay millions of dollars to the federal government, the auditor warned.

“Health Care Services’ failure to provide sufficient Medi-Cal oversight may result in state liability for improperly disbursed funds,” Howle wrote.

In a letter to the auditor, Health Care Services’ acting director, Richard Figueroa, disagreed with the report’s findings. Problems with the Medi-Cal eligibility system stem largely from the chaotic months following implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and have since been remedied, he said, including the enrollment of deceased beneficiaries. The auditor’s interpretation of how much the state may be liable for is also incorrect, the letter said, and the department may in fact owe nothing to the federal government.

Additionally, Figueroa said his department plans to complete improvements to its oversight of mental health spending this year, and already has an auditing system in place.

Meanwhile, the auditor criticized the Department of Public Health for not doing enough to rectify problems with how it handles complaints of abuse in nursing homes. This endangers the lives of patients in these facilities, the auditor stated.

Public Health must set a time limit for investigating complaints, and ensure it has enough staffing to handle the volume of complaints received, the auditor wrote.

The department did not respond to a request for comment before the publication deadline. According to the auditor, the department has said it is taking steps to address the problems identified in the report.

However, Michael Connors, an advocate with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, a nonprofit that has sued the department over its handling of nursing home complaints, said he sees little evidence of improvement. If anything, Public Health’s failure to address complaints in a timely manner is worse than ever, Connors said.

Abuse and neglect in the state’s nursing homes has reached “epidemic proportions,” the advocate contended. Many residents die before their complaints are investigated, and even after investigations are completed the department often fails to take action to ensure abuse doesn’t reoccur, he said.

“The Department of Public Health needs to start acting like a consumer protection agency,” Connors said. “It needs to speak out about the terrible conditions in California nursing homes, prevent unscrupulous operators from acquiring nursing homes, hold operators accountable when they mistreat residents, and begin treating nursing home residents as if their lives matter.”

Lastly, the auditor condemned the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for failing to adequately improve its ability to provide medical care to inmates in the state’s 35 prisons, according to the report. The federal government currently oversees inmate medical care at almost half of the state’s prisons, because the department has failed to show it can handle this responsibility itself. Quality of care has also declined at six prisons since 2017, according to a report by the Office of the Inspector General.

“CDCR has not made the significant improvements in the provision of inmate medical care necessary to remove it as a high‑risk agency,” the auditor concluded. “Inadequate health care heightens the likelihood of serious injury to patients and liability to the State.”

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California Agencies Failing to Regulate Mental Health Care Funding and Promptly Investigate Abuse in Nursing Homes, Auditor Finds