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WOULD YOU HAIL A CAB WITH A FLAT TIRE?
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The writer formerly was responsible for the quality of all the long-term care beds in New York County under the aegis of the federal government. In addition, he has lectured on quality assurance, assisted in the delivery of the first geriatric medical residency, designed the first clinical rotation for physician assistants in geriatric medicine. Most importantly, he has been an advocate for caregivers and their families for over 40 years through many programmatic initiatives, among other accomplishments in the field of gerontology.
R Becker LOY/Center for Healthy Living
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I was taken aback when I read this paragraph in a recent New York Times article regarding nursing home regulations whose original source was Kaiser Health News.
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Janine Finck-Boyle, director of health regulations and policy at LeadingAge, a group of nonprofit nursing homes and other entities that care for older people, said the group’s members had been struggling to cope with regulations. “If you’re a 50-bed rural facility out West or in the Dakotas,” she said, “you don’t have the resources to get everything done from A to Z.”
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Have we become so complacent regarding the quality of institutional nursing home care that it is now acceptable for the leaders in not-for-profit arena to accept substandard care as the norm? The not-for-profits were always reputed as having the highest standards of care.
Quoting this position of the not-for-profits in esteemed news media as the New York Times and Kaiser Health News in some way sanctions its acceptability.
Would you put your mother in a facility that by design is not expected to comply with basic standards of quality service delivery? Would you hail a cab with a flat tire?
There needs to be a better way.
To be continued.
R Becker LOY/Center for Healthy Living
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