Abuse in Nursing Care Focus of Report

Nursing home patients have been dragged down hallways, doused with ice water, sexually assaulted and beaten in their beds, yet few prosecutions have resulted, a congressional investigation found.

On Monday, the son of one beating victim tearfully gave senators a message from his late mother: “I don’t want anyone else to suffer like this.”

Describing the attack on his mother, Helen, in a Sacramento nursing home, Bruce Love said that by testifying, “I am here today to fulfill my mother’s request.”

The 18-month review by the Senate Aging Committee concluded that many physical and sexual abuse cases in nursing homes are not treated the same as similar crimes elsewhere. Its evidence includes a dramatic deathbed interview with one victim.

On a videotape shown at the hearing, Helen Love, 75, sat with a metal band pinned to her skull and described the 1998 beating she said was delivered by a caretaker after she soiled herself.

“He started beating me all along the bed,” the elderly women said in a slurred voice as she described the attacks to lawyers. “He choked me and he went and broke my neck. He broke my wrist bones, my hand. He put his hand over my mouth.”

Love died two days later from the trauma. The nursing home staff member eventually pleaded no contest to elder abuse and served a year in prison.

Bruce Love had difficulty getting through his written statement. The incident was not reported to a state official who was in the nursing home at the time of the beating, he said.

Love quoted his mother as saying: “All my life I have feared being neglected in a nursing home, and now I know what it is like. I was so close to death and somehow survived that attack. I don’t want anyone else to suffer like this. Please, son, tell someone who can help.”

The investigation found that nursing homes rarely call police for attacks that would bring an instant response if they occurred elsewhere.

“A crime is a crime, whether in or outside of a nursing home, where residents should not spend their days living in fear,” said Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), the committee chairman.

About 1.6 million Americans are cared for in 17,000 nursing homes. The homes received $58.4 billion in reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid in 2001.

Government figures show that from July through September 2000, nearly 26% of nursing homes were cited for violations that ranged from actual harm to residents to poor record-keeping and failure to put into practice policies to prevent abuse. Fewer than 2% of the cases involved actual harm to residents.

Nursing home industry officials said most facilities provide quality care. “We deplore any that do not,” said Alan DeFend, spokesman for the American Health Care Assn., which represents 12,000 mostly for-profit nursing homes.