December 11, 2008 What is Your Complaint about Nursing Homes and Physical Rehabilitation Centers inside of Nursing Homes?

As we write this issue of the blog, we wonder what your complaint is?

Have you been treated wrongly inside of a physical rehabilitation center or a nursing home?

What is your experience?

We would love to hear your first-hand experiences and those experiences of your family members and friends.

We await your stories, the truth and nothing but the truth.

No need to give your real name, just write to us and we will see what you have to say.


We are happy to hear from you regarding your own experiences in nursing homes and rehab centers. Whether you are a patient, resident, staff or visitor, we welcome you to communicate with us.

Died due to malpractice, and gross negligence

Well , just recently there has been a death that is due to someone who was hospitalized at a very bad hospital and also, before that a resident at a STaten Island rehabilitation center, a nursing home near the water.

Has someone you know died due to malpractice, or due to negligence or plain gross negligence, contact us anytime.









We are happy to hear from you regarding your own experiences in nursing homes and rehab centers. Whether you are a patient, resident, staff or visitor, we welcome you to communicate with us.

Latest NEWS:


This article gives very good ideas for everyone.
Please click here.





We are happy to hear from you regarding your own experiences in nursing homes and rehab centers. Whether you are a patient, resident, staff or visitor, we welcome you to communicate with us.

Finally, a direct link to some of the best and most informative
articles concerning nursing homes and rehab centers, hospitals
and medical centers.

For these free articles, go to the site of ezinearticles and do a search for
the author name of Jenny Thomas

Or just look here:

ARTICLES







We are happy to hear from you regarding your own experiences in nursing homes and rehab centers. Whether you are a patient, resident, staff or visitor, we welcome you to communicate with us.

Links to the BEST Healthcare articles about nursing homes and rehab and care centers

Here is the link to the expert author articles all about nursing homes and rehabilitation and care centers. This link will lead you to reports, articles, ratings, and inside experience in some nursing homes in America.

You will be glad that you checked this out:

Nursing Homes and Rehab and Care Centers




We are happy to hear from you regarding your own experiences in nursing homes and rehab centers. Whether you are a patient, resident, staff or visitor, we welcome you to communicate with us.

June, 2008

We are happy to hear from you regarding your own experiences in nursing homes and rehab centers. Whether you are a patient, resident, staff or visitor, we welcome you to communicate with us.

Hello and glad that you are here with us today. We are hoping that you will and do participate in this forum. It is all about reform, and changing things for the better inside of horrible rehabilitation and care centers and inside of horrible nursing homes. There are some things that need to be changed also, in some of the so-called good nursing homes.

Know this--that if you are undecided as to whether to go to live in a nursing home or not, kindly reconsider even thinking about it. Many of our friends, relatives, co-workers and associates have family members in some of them and they are almost all dissatisfied with the care, lack of care, the treatment and everything related to the bad homes and rehab centers.

This does not come out on the front pages of the news because it appears that the Directors of Social Work and the Administrators inside the horrible places, do their best and use their powers to keep everything QUIET, and to keep things out of the news.

Recently this past year, a lady actually left a nursing home , just walked out the front door of one, in one rehab and care center, and she got all the way to the Staten Island Ferry and not one employee noticed that she was even missing. How does that happen? It happens because the Administration and owners of nursing homes and those kinds of places are more interested in making money, in keeping money than they are interested in making things safe, clean and acceptable for residents and visitors there.

Yes, you did not see that incident on the news because it was hushed up and it happened right there in your own Staten Island community.


Then, months later, at another Staten Island nursing home, a resident was found on the ground after supposedly jumping from a sixth floor window. No one noticed this resident was gone until the body was discovered. Yes, right there in Staten Island. Fortunately this incident, this deadly incident was permitted to be put in the newspapers. Fortunately reporters got to the scene before any one could hush this one up.


Pass the word around. MOST , yes, MOST nursing homes and most rehab and care centers are focusing their attention on making money, getting money from Medicaid and Medicare and getting money from private payments rather than focusing their efforts and staff on keeping residents and visitors safe.

THis is your news flash for the month of June, 2008 .


We would like your input today; kindly leave a note to help ALL residents of all nursing homes around the world. Do you have a mom or dad? DO you have children? Then you need to participate here because these things affect you and your family and your heirs.

Stearing clear of nursing homes; try this

Things you might need to help someone stay at home (rather than go to a nursing home for daily living):

1. Walker
2. Wheelchair
3. Commode
4. Urinal
5. Bandages, wrappings, and other medical supplies when appropriate
6. Special stockings or socks
7. Special gadget that helps people put their own sox on
8. Lotions
9. Their own prescribed medications
10. Timers or reminders for medications
11. Palms or digital reminders/or computer pages to remind the patient of medicine or therapy routines
12. Possibly some home care attendants or visiting nurse services
13. Meals on Wheels -- when appropriate
14. Visiting counseling services
15. Visiting doctors' services or doctors on call
16. Posted emergency phone numbers
17. Cellular phone service and or lifeline-- whichever is more appropriate
18. Bathtub and shower bars
19. Grippers or Gophers to help reach things on high shelves or pick up things
20. and some other gadgets and equipment

This is just a beginning and a short list of what you might need if you want to stay in your own home rather than live in a nursing home.

We are happy to hear from you regarding your own experiences in nursing homes and rehab centers. Whether you are a patient, resident, staff or visitor, we welcome you to communicate with us.

Alert! Nursing Homes Alert; Please Read

Each and every day as our inspectors, observers, family members, co-workers and visitors observe what is happening inside of nursing homes, we realize and learn that the problem is throughout the system in both caring nursing homes and in the horror-house nursing homes.

There is one problem that is totally systematic throughout whether the nursing home is a good nursing home or bad nursing homes, in one area of practice these places are doing bad work and they are making patients more dependent rather than helping patients become more independent.

After all, when someone is in a nursing home for rehab purposes, they are usually there for short-term periods. Here is what happens when they arrive at some or most nursing homes:

• They are politely, yes politely, convinced to wear diapers for the sole convenience of the staff. Of course, the staff does not word it this way but that is the truth. They politely insinuate that if the person does not wear diapers that they might have accidents and deficate in their pants and on their sheets.
• They convince patients, politely convince them, at the same time telling patients that it is their choice, that wearing diapers makes sense in case they have an accident.
• What follows is that patients become dependent on the diapers and learn and are taught that is is way easier to poop in your pants than it is to have someone come to help you to the restroom.
• Patients are taught this because once the staff knows the patient is in diapers they do not rush to come to their aid. The staff attitude is "that person is in a diaper" and they ignore the patient and the patient deficates in the diaper.

How do diapers benefit the staff?

Here is how:

1. It takes LESS time for staff to change diapers than it takes for staff to help someone out of bed and help that person to go to the restroom.
2. If someone refuses to wear diapers, they make the patient wait and wait and wait longer for help to bathroom and that patient eventually realizes that it makes sense to wear a diaper because the staff will not come to his or her aid to bring him or her to the restroom in time and they will have accidents if they do not wear diapers.
3. Staff does not have to lift patients up from the bed or have their weight while holding them in the bathroom.

IT is all around convenience for staff to have patients wear diapers.

Note that not all patients medically need diapers. Only some patients medically need diapers and those patients should wear diapers.

But when staff consistently convinces patients to wear diapers for the staff convenience then the staff is doing a disservice to patients all over the world.

Kindly leave your comments here. Thank you. We look forward to hearing from you about this topic.

We are happy to hear from you regarding your own experiences in nursing homes and rehab centers. Whether you are a patient, resident, staff or visitor, we welcome you to communicate with us.

All Over USA and Worldwide

Some of the most horrible abuses in the nursing home system are happening in the United States of America and in the UK.

Stories, true stories, of elderly and residents being kept in bed for more than fifteen hours a day, and being kept on toilets for half-hour or more, have been circulating throughout the United States. In one severe case , a man was taken to the emergency room due to maggots in his eyes.

How in the world can a medical institution or nursing home allow the health of a human being to deteriorate so much that maggots have time to grow in a human beings eyes?

And this is just the beginning of the horror stories. These stories are all over the USA and all over the UK.

Pope Benedict and nursing homes

Pure Opinion

(When we remember that pure opinion is just someone's opinion, which they are fully entitled to, then we will remember that this post is legitimate, honest, and right to the point).


Pope Benedict:

The Pope planned, along with his entourage, a huge Birthday Bash for himself. They planned it good, covered everything that they thought should have been covered, and went and put it into action, for what would have been the largest, celebration, birthday bash in this country --for many years to come.

That's the way it all went down, but this is the way that I would have liked it to happen, but no one asked me, so I save my pure opinion for here, for this page.

We would have liked to see the Pope, Pope Benedict:

• Gather all the children and teens into the Great meadow of Central Park and hear them out,listen to them, listen to their stories of how they live, where they are in their lives and what they plan to do for the rest of their lives.
• Meet and great the real people of the USA, not just the rich or priviledged few thousand that were given that honor by an unseen, unheard of lottery.
• Gather all the politicians, Congressmen and women, Senators, and everyone who is anyone in government and taken them on midnight raids into nursing homes in Staten Island and the rest of New York. We would have liked the Pope to see what is happening to people in NY --that are the same age and younger than he is, himself.
• We would have liked to see the Pope leave his 40-people entourage at home, and just come as "himself", to NY, to Washington, to the USA, as the chosen representative of Jesus Christ, and we would have liked to see him approach the podium and tell everyone that they, yes they, are the true representatives of Jesus Christ, while he is the representative of the Church (The Catholic Church), and tell them that as representatives of the true Jesus Christ, they have a duty to love people, to keep Jesus in their lives and to do good, choose good over choosing evil.

We would have liked to see the Pope do all of those things, but he didn't do it. There are so many things and so many actions that we would have liked the Pope to do and to take while he in the United States, yet, we didn't see him do these things.

So what does that mean?

It means that we, as a people, as a nation, as society, we, need to do these things for ourselves.

Calling all government officials, we need your help and we need your assistance in getting raids for the nursing homes that are harming people, that are treating people with no dignity, and those rehabilitation and care centers who are harming both residents, patients and families. We need to see this happen in our lifetime. We need the government to step in and to rescue these seniors from the clutches of rehab centers that do nothing but make people into vegetables and then take all their money, their medicaid and their everything they earned in their lifetimes.

We need government to step in and stop those offending rehab centers and nursing homes in the USA, specifically in Staten Island, NY, USA.

Rumor or Not? We need help checking this out

After doing some searching on the internet, we found that some major things have happened in some nursing homes (not good things).

After comparing them, we noticed that some of the offending problems and places have changed their names from nursing homes to "rehabilitation " or rehabilitation and care centers.

That appears to be a direct effort on the part of the facility to distance themselves from bad publicity about horrible problems and incidents, by taking the words "nursing homes" from their titles.

Is this true or rumor?

What do you think about it?


Have you heard any bad stories (true or not ) about rehabilitation and care centers in your city, town or country?

We would love to hear from everybody about their experiences.

Rate Your Nursing Homes & Rehab Centers

Now, finally there is a site to rate your nursing homes. (SEE THE LINK to rate - in this message) Read the entire message before connecting with this link . Thank you).

Rate your nursing homes and rehabilitation centers by emailing us with
your details ; You can remain anonymous. Email onenewbeginning@yahoo.com


Do you have a relative in a nursing home or rehab center?


Are you presently living in a center?

Go to this site and post your own notes. Have your family and all their friends rate the place. This is one way to get the news out about the bad and the good nursing homes.




You can change the world just be giving your own opinion at




ALSO, leave your rating here in a note or by email. You can help seniors and young people by rating places.

Others will see your ratings and hopefully no one will choose to go to bad nursing homes or bad rehab centers.

Here is one more link (the other links are the same and this is one different link).

Apparent suicide at Nursing home?

The news article (see the other posts here), states that the death was an apparent suicide.

THE NEWS LINK is at the end of this article also and here too. Please read this whole message before clicking on the link.

We are wondering why they put the cause of death in the news when it wasn't fully determined that it was a suicide.

Seems the assumption is made that it is a sucide? But why make that assumption when there are so many other assumptions that can be made in circumstances like that.


What about these factors:

• IF (That's if) this woman committed suicide, what were the reasons that she felt so strongly about that she took her life? What was her quality of life like? Did she have anything to look forward to? Most times, people commit or attempt to commit suicide because they have nothing to look forward to.
• If, it was a suicide, could other determining factors be what her life was like at the nursing home? What is the reason why a human being wants to take their own life?

If this has not clearly been determined that it was a suicide, then what was the cause of death?

These are not accusations but these are only questions. These are probably questions that most everyone who read the accounts had in their mind. Some didn't state the questions but others did ask .

All this post is saying is this:

What makes the determination that this was a suicide?

1. Was there a suicide note?
2. Did the woman threaten to kill herself at all while at the nursing home? (And if so, why were proper precautions not made --the window? ).
3. Did anyone else know about this woman's need to kill herself (If this was a suicide)?

Usually people have warnings when people are going to threaten themselves and others. Were there warnings in this particular case where this woman was found on the ground after having either jumped or been urged out of the window. (I state those two possibilities only because the news articles states that this is

apparent suicide --

The word apparent means it has not yet been officially determined that it indeed was a suicide.

Does anyone have the latest news on this story, we would love to hear the outcome of any investigations or new findings in this case.

Either way, if she jumped that's bad news; If this wasn't a suicide, that's worse news.

We will watch the news to see the updates. Kindly post the updates here in your own postings (messages). Thanks for the information.

READ the news story about the woman they found on the ground.

Rest In Peace, New Vanderbilt resident

On another note, a death at


New Vanderbilt Rehabilitation and Care Center,


the link is here: (This article is about the woman and her life, but does not mention what she died from).


Link: click these words

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/senior_citizen_takes_6story_de.html

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/senior_citizen_takes_6story_de.html

Resident Jumps from Own Window in Nursing Home in Staten Island, NY

Staten Island Incident:

Here is the website. Nursing home resident jumped from her window. What brought this on?


What made this woman jump out the window?

Was this really a suicide?
****
******(The news says "apparent suicide" -it does not say that it definitely was determined to be a suicide).


Stories like this, above -- true stories, tell us more than ever that we need nursing home reforms.


All around the country, nursing home residents are dying in different ways. Some die because they could not survive the bedsores they obtain in different rehab centers and nursing homes. Others die from falls, while still others die deaths like that one listed above.

Yet, where is the public outcry for more and better supervision, more and better health care inside of these places?

We need investigators to go into all nursing homes at random, consistently and constantly during the year. Investigators should interview all residents and take anonymous complaints of any problems if there are any.

What Happens when employees report?

The reason that CONGRESS needs to step in is because the employees who are witnessing the abuses, and malpractices -- when they step forward, they are penalyzed.


One nurse actually committed suicide because she reported abuse and the system went against her and told her to cover up the abuse.

Here is the article, and we quote:


To understand the stakes in this feud, it's useful to revisit the tragic death eight years ago of Mary Hochman, a 52-year-old night nurse at Beverly La Cumbre nursing home, a Santa Barbara affiliate of Beverly Enterprises for which Carlson served as California-based vice president of operations.
According to news accounts, Hochman walked onto a beach and shot herself in the heart after a months-long dispute with her employer. Her problems began when she tried to report that a nurse's aide had hit an 81-year-old man with dementia. According to Contra Costa Times reporter Carolyn McMillan, Hochman said in a sworn affidavit that she was told to cover up the information.
"If a nurse cannot protect her patients, I do not want to be a nurse," Hochman wrote in her suicide note. "This has taken all hope away from me."
Hochman's note, along with a journal detailing instances where she was told to cover up incidents of abuse and neglect, helped spur a federal raid on the nursing home. A subsequent investigation revealed patients suffering beatings and maggot-infested bedsores, culminating in a $2 million settlement against Beverly relating to preventable deaths. The investigation also spawned a dozen civil suits, according to press reports.
After the Hochman investigation and settlement, Beverly Enterprises sold off its nursing homes in California and Carlson took on his consulting role as head of the California Alliance for Nursing Home Reform


Check this website for the whole story.

Calling All Genuine, Honest Politicians

Now is the time for all politicians, yes all, to become united on the issues of nursing homes reform. There are too many young and old people that are living in nursing homes and that are being mistreated, neglected and handled with a lack of care.

There are too many deaths in these nursing homes and there are too many people turning into vegetables due to the quality of care in some of these rehabilitation and care facilities.

Residents, patients and relatives need to be able to make complaints anonymously and those complaints need to be checked out thoroughly without warning the nursing homes that they are coming in to inspect the place.

Too many nursing home residents and patients are in agony and yet they still are too terrified to make legitimate complaints in order to achieve a better quality of life.

Where is the help for these old and young people?

If you are a politician or if you have any kind of government job or hold any office, we beg you to begin to change the laws that govern rehabilitation and care centers

and nursing homes.

We beg you to help protect those young and old people that are inside of these nursing homes.


For Whom the bell tolls...it tolls for the seniors now and in the future, the young people of today will be tomorrow's seniors.

Please, please unite today and join against these unscrupulous nursing homes and rehabilitation and care centers that are doing harm to their patients, relatives and to the residents.

Read news stories about rehab centers and about nursing homes here at our blog. Help us bring the news to the front pages of the net.


To the public:

We seek your input, your opinion, write to us today--write confidentially. All emails will be answered.

Nursing homes alert: Do you know someone in a rehab and care center or nursing home?

If you check the news or the web, most of the alerts about nursing homes were written years ago. We need updates and we need our politicians and other community members to get after the nursing homes and the rehab and care centers that are providing bad care to our family members, friends and other relatives.

If you know someone who is in a nursing home now or if you know someone who was in one in the past, you have the power to change things for the better.

Leave us a note and you have the power to change the world for the better.

All emails will be answered.
There is a union of patients, residents and family members that will help you register complaints anonymously in the future. That will stop the rehab and care centers and nursing homes from stopping legitimate complaints.

In the past, when residents or patients registered complaints, what happened was most times, there were punishments for patients and for family members who made legitimate complaints.

Now the union of patients and residents and family members will aid you in making complaints and making your legitmate complaints anonymously in the future.

There is more than one group that is now forming (and some have formed already in your own neighborhoods). Here are some details:

• All you need is an email address to participate.
• Interviews are free and can be over the phone or by email.
• Some interviews will be in person but not at the nursing home or rehab and care center.
• You anonymity will be protected. Your information will not be shared with anyone against your will.

If you have gripes about a rehab and care center or a nursing home, contact us as soon as possible.

(Note, there are no fees; no one will ask you for any money at all; there is no registration process).

These groups are forming and have been formed for your protection and for the protection of people inside of rehabilitation and care centers and inside of nursing homes.

There are many good nursing homes; you just need to know which ones they are. By sharing information about rehab and care centers that are horrible , you will be helping someone and you will be saving a life one day.

If you have a bad or good experience in any area of rehab or nursing homes, we urge you to send us your information and help this country change these things for the better.

Please write to us and email us so that you can change things for the better. Thank you for reading.