Eldercare Abuse in Nursing Homes

By now you should all know that I detest nursing homes. It is not the idea of a nursing home that I dislike so much, I actually adore the idea of seniors having the option to live somewhere where everyone is in their age range and where they have someone looking out for them 24-7-365. Unfortunately in my experience that is not the case in the nursing homes I have had personal interaction with.

It downright sickens me when I read something such as a recent article from Parade Magazine about Protecting the Elderly From Abuse in which the lead example of abuse was a 90-year-old grandmother who, in 2006, was raped by a worker at the nursing home where she lived. As scary as that was, it paled in the shadow of the next sentence: "Similar incidents over the years..."

Say WHAT?!

Now, if that is not enough for you to reconsider trusting your loved one to a nursing home, read a little further into the article and you find that in seven states, 7,000 applicants for eldercare positions had violent criminal records or a substantiated history of abuse. I have no idea just how many applications there were in those states (or even which seven states they looked at), but I can tell you that it scares me to think that 7,000 of those who applied for eldercare positions were the kind who would abuse or injure the very people we entrust to their care.

And there are no laws in place that would force screening for eldercare applicants. They screen those who want to work with children, so why not screen those who are applying for an eldercare position?

Computer start up issues

Well, I know I ain't been here for a while, but this time I have a good excuse. My computer started having serious issues last Sunday, and I have been fighting to perform CPU/CPR on it.

The problem seemed to be a program that Windows XP was not getting along with, but trying to reset to a date before the program was loaded did not help, nor did Spybot, or virus scans, or a hundred other things I tried. I finally ended up resetting the computer to factory specs last night and am now going to spend the weekend getting it set back up to how it is supposed to be set up - getting my programs back in place and all that fun stuff.

I lost a lot of stuff, but thankfully I think I may not have to replace the computer itself. Won't know for sure for a couple more days though.

Can you be billed for a medical error? Maybe

Does your State charge you if your doctor operates on the wrong body part, or worse, performs a surgical procedure on you that was intended for another patient? You might be as surprised as I am by the number of States where there are no, or limited, policies for the billing of medical errors.

Take a look at the MSNBC article on bills for medical errors and check out their interactive map that can help you find out what your State's policy on medical errors is.