Nursing Home Patient Care

Your articles on nursing home care were very frightening. Your statement that “enforcing health-care standards” by the state system “is so ineffective that even the worst homes rarely lose their licenses” is not a condemnation of the state system but of the whole system of care giving.

I cannot understand why private companies are paid to warehouse our elderly.

My mother and mother-in-law both ended up in privately run different “homes” where nurses were seen to sleep, employees ignored bells, inappropriate food was given, cleanliness of patients was far from godliness, possessions of patients were constantly stolen or “lost,” etc.

Too many scandalous articles have surfaced over the years but nothing has been done to better the conditions. There are some things private enterprise should not be doing. One of these is the care of those disabled enough to need 24-hour supervised care.

The various states should run these homes with civil service, trained personnel.

SHIRLEY FLETCHER

Vista