Expose of assisted living centers is disturbing

UPDATE: Part two of the four-day series is online this morning and it takes a look the Emeritus track record of ignoring health care requirements while focusing on filling more beds.
A sample: "For assisted living chains such as Emeritus, there is a powerful business incentive to boost occupancy rates and to take in sicker residents, who can be charged more."

Pro Publica, one of the top journalism sites on the web, today launched a four-part series that scrutinizes the booming, “haphazardly regulated” assisted living industry.

Part one of this expose looks at California-based Emeritus, a rapidly expanding company that reached the level of 200 assisted living facilities in 35 states by 2006. According to ProPublica, the corporation’s strategy included buying up smaller chains, many of them distressed and financially troubled, with plans to turn them around.

The Emeritus properties are nicely decorated and modern, according to the story, but at one California facility, Emerald Hills, the company’s own internal documents show that an audit of the memory care unit for residents with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia was “found wanting in almost every important regard. In truth, (the) ‘specially trained’ staffers hadn’t actually been trained” to provide health care for those in need -- a violation of California law.

Here’s a portion of the report, which was a collaboration between ProPublica and PBS:

“The facility relied on a single nurse to track the health of its scores of residents, and the few licensed medical professionals who worked there tended not to last long. During the three years prior to (September 2008), Emerald Hills had cycled through three nurses and was now employing its fourth. At least one of those nurses was alarmed by what she saw, telling top Emeritus executives — in writing — that Emerald Hills suffered from ‘a huge shortage of staff’ and was mired in ‘total dysfunction.’

“During some stretches, the facility went months without a full-time nurse on the payroll.

“The paucity of workers led to neglect, according to a nurse who oversaw the facility before resigning in disgust. Calls for help went unanswered. Residents suffering from incontinence were left soaking in their own urine. One woman, addled by dementia, was allowed to urinate in the same spot in the hallway of the memory care wing over and over and over.”

At other Emeritus facilities in California, ProPublica reports, state inspectors for years had cited them for lack of staff and lack of adequate training, as well as for other basic shortcomings.