Recent events have forced me to reexamine the facts surrounding the death of my Mother. I have been sorting through medical records, letters, articles and my notes.
The first and probably most alarming thing is the poor records kept by Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation. If you think about medical records, what would you think is important? I would like to think that they had my personal information correct on the admission documents.
In Mom's case they had the wrong room number on most of the documents ! How many ways could that be a problem ? Well they could easily administer the wrong medication, give the wrong food ( mom had food allergies), not provide the required assistance in ambulating, the list goes on and on. The bottom line is in a nursing home, if you don't know who you have in what room and bed it could be a catastrophic.
In nursing homes the staff changes on a regular basis, especially the cna's who provide the majority of care. If the records don't match the patient, who is going to notice. With staff levels at the bare minimum or even below in some instances, they wouldn't even have time to check.
Next you would want to know that there were enough staff to provide necessary care. It is alarming to learn that there are no rules dictating number of patients to staff on each shift. There are some industry standards, but at Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation, they have ways to get around those.
Obviously there would be more staff present in the daytime hours. You would have the physical therapists, dietary aides, housekeepers, along with the nurses, doctors and cna's. That said, you would think the level of care would be better during the day. That is not necessarily the case. Consider that during the day they need to change the sheets, bathe the residents and assist with basic hygiene, help them get dressed, get them to therapy and so on. At Hendersonville Health and Rehabilitation, they use the physical and occupational therapists to do many of things the nurses would do. They give showers, assist with hygiene, get patients out of their rooms and into therapy rooms, allowing for the changing of bed linens.
The most infuriating thing is the actions or lack of action by the NCDHSR. The NCDHSR is a division of the NCDHHS that licenses and does complaint investigations in nursing homes. The number of complaints that are substantiated by the NCDHSR is minimal. I have a copy of the so called investigation of my complaint and there are mistakes and outright lies throughout the report. It is apparent after three years of research that their findings are where other agencies stop. If the NCDHSR doesn't find any substantiated complaints, no one will look any further.
I'm convinced that the NCDHSR is in the pocket of the wealthy nursing home owners. The evidence is there to substantiate complaints but not if no one looks. Is someone at the NCDHSR benefitting from turning the other way. Is it possible that the Governor of the State of North Carolina is turning a blind eye. After all he is the one who appoints the secretary and big shots at the NCDHHS. Could it be that the reason our Governor turned down the Medicaid money is the fact that it would bring more scrutiny to the investigations?
I don't know any of this for sure, but I believe that anyone looking could find out who is benefitting from the inadequacy of the NCDHSR and the NCDHHS. I contacted the Governor two weeks ago regarding the NCDHHS, and never received a response. Actions speak louder than words
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