Report Says Texas Nursing Homes Are the Worst in the Country

[TexasTowelie]

Minnie Graham, a 98-year-old great-great-grandmother, kept telling her family that people were hitting her at Garland's Winters Park Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. When her loved ones found her eyes blackened and her arms bruised, they demanded answers. Graham, they were told, had fallen out of her wheelchair. Her granddaughters didn't buy it.

So, they set set up a clock with a hidden camera in her room and waited. What it documented was horrifying, as you'll see in the CBS News video above. Graham was slapped, pushed, pulled, sprayed in the face with water and gagged with a towel that had just been used on her body. At one point, she's crying out, "Somebody help me." She died not long thereafter. Because of her treatment, her granddaughters think she had simply lost the desire to live.

Her case may be extreme, but it's a symptom of a far larger, just as insidious pattern of neglect and lax oversight in Texas. According to a report from the organization Families for Better Care, which analyzed staffing data, performance measures from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and complaints from the Office of the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman, Texas nursing homes are the worst in the country.

Fewer than 15 percent of its facilities are staffed at above-average professional nursing levels, while nearly 70 percent hire below the minimum number of caregivers needed to properly meet the needs of its residents.

The video mentioned above and the complete article are at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/08/report_says_texas_nursing_home.php .

ETA: Watch the video here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57597944/eleven-states-get-failing-grades-for-nursing-home-care/

[johncoby2]

1. No one really cares about this....until

Until they need to care about it, and then it is too late.

[TexasTowelie]

2. Watching the video makes me grateful that we didn't place my father in a nursing home.

He stayed at a home for about a month after he broke his coccyx in an auto accident a few blocks away from his home in Brenham at the age of 79. He recovered somewhat and was able to get around for a couple of years afterward. However, he stayed alive for about another five years before he passed away a couple of weeks before his 86th birthday due to Parkinson's disease.

I'm certain that all of his financial assets would have been depleted and most likely his treatment in a nursing home would have been almost as deplorable as what was shown in the video.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. .

.

[hobbit709]

4. Just another example of what lack of regulation does.

The mindset of TX on government oversight needs a drastic change.