Great article re: for profit nursing homes

[Anonymous]

I can across this article which did a great job explaining how awful the nursing home industry can be. It explains how deregulation negatively impacted quality of care and how certain nursing homes try to game the market in the name of higher profits. Definitely worth a read!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/profit-nursing-homes-cutting-corners-124659885.html

[Anonymous]

OP., I’m not gonna read it as I am pretty familiar with the situation after ten years of exposure (and can’t take it!) but I strongly encourage anyone who is not read in to do so. I encourage all my friends who may face this with their parents to look into nonprofit options. The differences were truly stark.

[Anonymous]

What's the ratio of profit to non-profit nursing homes out there? Without reading the article, it seems like a no-brainer, so there must be some other reason we're not all using non-profit.

[Anonymous]

This was an interesting and alarming article — but focused primarily on the risks of midsize facilities.

I am interested in more of the operational details of some of the companies that run facilities in this area. For example, Sunrise owns over 250 facilities and has a parent company listed as Welltower (Lender: real estate investment trust in the health care and senior living community). Sunrise has an A+ from BBB (according to Forbes) - but is the model of a parent co that is a real estate investment trust a reason to worry about the future of these facilities (meaning that profits may be extracted and staffing/ services to residents impacted)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's the ratio of profit to non-profit nursing homes out there? Without reading the article, it seems like a no-brainer, so there must be some other reason we're not all using non-profit.

A friend is looking at CCRCs, and the for-profit ones tend to be much slicker -- bigger, fancier apartments, etc. So when people are facing giving up their long-time homes, and they think of themselves as still perfectly competent, it's easy to focus on the surface stuff rather than thinking about how good the staffing is.

[Anonymous]

I’m a nurse and we get patients from nursing homes in the hospitals. Even the fancy ones that cost $$$ are a crapshoot. Not enough staff. The “nurses” are most likely CNAs. Many don’t have a clue about medications. It’s just freaking terrible. And it’s not just nursing homes. Look at for profit hospitals like HCA and UHC. Or private equity emergency medicine. Add an aging population and the whole thing is going to implode.

[Anonymous]

Nursing homes have been getting worse as they became more standard. Visitors have dropped since covid. There's no one to perform for.

[Anonymous]

Pp here - also, smaller families means a smaller safety net.

But I used to volunteer in an "excellent " nursing home as a teenager, decades ago. There was always abuse and forgetting to give people medication and pretending not to hear requests they didn't want to deal with. And fighting between residents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a nurse and we get patients from nursing homes in the hospitals. Even the fancy ones that cost $$$ are a crapshoot. Not enough staff. The “nurses” are most likely CNAs. Many don’t have a clue about medications. It’s just freaking terrible. And it’s not just nursing homes. Look at for profit hospitals like HCA and UHC. Or private equity emergency medicine. Add an aging population and the whole thing is going to implode.

^This. Most people don't have a clue how these places work. It's a national disgrace that we don't have better regulations for these places especially after Covid.

[Anonymous]

My parent is at a Sunrise, and it’s been okay. You do have to keep up on things.

I visit at all hours and walk around to get a sense of the situation. There seems to be not enough staff at times.

My other parent was at Brookdale in Olney, which was terrible.

Yes, mostly CNAs care for residents. They are overseen by a RN.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's the ratio of profit to non-profit nursing homes out there? Without reading the article, it seems like a no-brainer, so there must be some other reason we're not all using non-profit.

IDK the ratio, but there are just not that many in my experience. In my hometown, there were a number of for-profits, one mom/pop for-profit, and one not-for-profit. Our dad went into a for-profit as that was the closest one to our parents' house and our mom could still drive there in the winter. Then our dad passed. Our mom was lucky about 18 months later - she got into a not-for-profit as there happened to be a bed/room open the day we called. TBH, it was a lot nicer than all but the very fancy for-profit homes in our town. Wasn't luxurious, but well tended and the staff were great. We liked the staff that worked with our dad, but there was tension as the patient ratios were high and the supplies were low. The staff there who were the most organized would try to make the move to the not-for-profit as the conditions were much better.

[Anonymous]

What are the non-profit nursing homes around here?