Third patient dies after transfer from Clarinda mental hospital

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Way to go, Terry.

A third patient has died shortly after being transferred to a private nursing home from the state mental institution at Clarinda, which closed in June.

Ron Kuker, 80, died last Thursday at the Perry Health Care Center. He had lived at the nursing home less than two months, his family said. Before that, he had spent about nine years at the Clarinda facility, where he was a resident of a special program for elderly people with serious mental illnesses

Kuker, who had schizophrenia and used a wheelchair, was one of 10 former patients of the Clarinda program who were transferred in the past few months to a total of five private nursing homes. A Register investigation earlier this month reported that eight of those patients, including Kuker, were sent to nursing homes that a federal registry rates as “below average” or “much below average” in overall quality. Three have now died since being transferred.

Kuker’s sister, Jolene Happe, said her brother lost significant weight and became withdrawn after the move. The Perry nursing home’s employees tried to help him, she said, but the facility lacked the expertise and resources to handle such complicated, fragile patients. “Putting them in a place that wasn’t capable was a death sentence,” Happe said a few hours after her brother’s funeral Tuesday in their hometown of Carroll.

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1. When you shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub

shit gets real.

2014 iowa political ads were " Largest tax cut in iowa history"

iowa is no longer a proper noun.