similar to this in many ways.

It shouldn't be that way but it is.

A good nursing home is hard to find if you don't have big bucks to spend.

my grandfather for 5 years with my mother. She remarked on several occasions that she would never put me through this when she got old. 20 years passed and I ended up caretaking her when she developed dementia. I finally had to place her in a nursing home after 7 years with a lot of regret and disgust.

The health "care" system in this country is deplorable, especially for the elderly.

look toward the future trying to make things better if even in a selfish way for themselves, but many remain with blinders on.

I do not want to be in anyones care. Pills, baby, pills.

report back on incurable cancer, they quit all of their shots, drank tons of milk and died alone. They were older and apparently had just had it ... What a sad society we are.

The couldn't call 911 even before they left.



This is sad.

And makes me wonder about the oversight of which ever agency ordered the place closed.
It ought to be sued for elder abuse, for not folloowing up on the patients.

Will keep you posted. This angers me.

I worked for an inpatient non-profit in SF for 3 years and not once did ANY outside audits occur.
Back here in Ala. we have state audits at least once a year, EACH, from JACHO and from Medicad.

Didn't anyone arrange for transport of the patients to another home.

The nursing home I visit have people from the state visit on a regular basis.

Some one really messed up.

This falls entirely on the agency that closed this facility. What the fuck did they think would happen???

That being said, how could the administrators or nursing staff leave while these people were bedridden?!?

This is quite the country we're developing here. YIKES

All these people in the home have government aid.

Who was going to collect on this aid if the home was closed.

Just let them die and still collect.

Bless the people who did stay.

stay and do the best they could for those bedridden people. I ask myself every day it seems, "what kind of country are we living in?" I swear, if there is a God, this country is in deep shit.

Very disturbing.

Been implemented

Not because of the order to close the place, but for not fucking following up to insure that all patients had been placed into suitable care. Given that it happened in California, I see an avalanche of lies coming from the right, completely distorting what happened and blaming it on the ACA implementation.

When you just know it's some bureaucratic mess-up (which they will highlight as a government failure as if this is always what happens).

will go find jobs in other nursing homes and treat more patients like shit. They need to be called out. Revoked of any caretaker certifications or licenses.

You transfer their care to another responsible adult family member or licensed employee. Major screwup by management who needs their licenses reviewed just like the employees who abandoned them. That should include some doctors and nurses who supervise.

A lot of the people who work in nursing homes earn very little and depend on that little to feed their children.

It's not fair to expect a bunch of extremely poorly paid employees without any savings to take care of people free in a nursing home that was being closed.Calling was the responsibility of management or the owner, and oversight was the responsibility of the supervising agency.

This is an awful, awful story, but blaming it on the employees who were probably making an average of $8-$9 an hour is just not right.

We're so evolved from our ancient ancestors as defined by 19th Century scientists, yes?

No.

People get put into nursing homes and nobody ever visits them, ever.

"civilized society."

I moved back home to take of my mom even though we had to count baloney slices to get by. She stayed in her home of 46 years and I cobbled together enough "niceties" to get by.

We are one fucked up people who discard our elders.

and she must have raised you right.

Your reply brought tons of emotions to the fore.

I wish I could have been the billionaire taking care of my mom; this world view requires billions.

I wasn't.

Someday, I will forgive myself that. Not today. Not yet.

I thank you.

Taking care of an elder is very hard.

I am guessing you were on your own doing this.

It is very stressful.

I had both parents to deal with at one time, it was very difficult.

Find some peace with this.

I did the best I could and it wasn't enough. It was overwhelming.

I will find some "peace with this."

Some day.

Thank you.

Sounds like the money was tight.

Your mother had something more important then money, she had you.

I had both parents at one time to deal with, and it was so stressful.

I had help and it was rough.

My mother wanted to go to a home, I found her a good one.

She past away there.

My father stayed with me until he got very ill and needed more care then I could give.

I wasn't close to my parents but I did the best I could.

So did you.

Give yourself a big hug, you deserve it.

I am sure your mother wouldn't want you to feel this way.

You and your mother had something special.

Remember the good times and let go of the bad.

Get it all out.

Then I burn the paper, and I let the upset go.

It works for me.



You have done you duty, now it is time for you.

I wish you a happy life.

respect of a child. Don't discount what you gave to her. Forgive yourself, and be at peace.

as long as possible. Moved across the country to do it too. It was a rewarding experience and i recommend it. I recently moved an 89-year-old into my home so she could escape a facility she hated, then helped her find a new place. Now I have an 86-year-old neighbor i watch out for. These people enrich my life.

Gives humanity some hope.

I blame the owner(s)/manager(s) of the place - 100%.

They need to do some serious jail time.

I would like to know who owned the facility and their financial take over the years.

from the link.

Good.

I do not understand how the staff/management could have walked away without making arrangements for sick elderly patients.

I can say that, because I work for them. The right hand has no idea what the left is doing. And the caregiving department just kind of dissolved.

Ask a caregiver about time sheets, pay checks, or assignments. The central organizing department has many phone numbers, all of which go to voice mail, and none of which will ever call you back.

Budget cuts have consequences. People like to praise how Sacramento started balancing the budget. Hey, I like Gov. Brown, but let's not pretend all that was amazingly done without the backs of others being broken.

Alameda county is the picture of dysfunction. I'm just grateful my paycheck isn't contingent on their competence. I know workers who have gone without paycheck for months because the great "efficiency" model shifted everything to Chino where clearly no one gives a shit.

Don't judge the workers that harshly. They're not given a whole lot of instruction.

Are you serious? What kind of absolute GHOUL just walks away from elderly and infirm patients without even bothering to call the police or SOMEONE to deal with the situation? Who the fuck needs INSTRUCTION to know that you don't fucking leave human beings paying astronomical sums for their care to make sure that they're properly cared for, relocated, their families notified, that they're payments to the corrupt joint have been stopped and just walks off knowing those people won't be fed or get their meds or bathed or taken to the bathroom or ANYTHING without doing the bare ass minimum of getting out the fucking PHONE and reaching out to the police, the press, the county fucking SOMEONE to take care of this God awful mess???

Fucking RIGHT I judge them, and may every one of them that just walked the hell away without a care in the world for those poor patients as if they were nothing but office furniture rot in the depths of hell and a fucking PIT of a jail cell until then.

What I meant to say was, don't judge them too harshly until the full extent of the county's communication becomes clear. The news story is very sparse about what the workers were told in regards to the patients.

You'd be amazed at how shitty a job the county's social service bureaucracy can do. The story seems like a simple abandonment by cold, unfeeling workers, but I've experienced enough to stop and wonder what the county was telling people when this went down.

The fact remains that they all left with the full knowledge that there was no one to care for these people when they left. YOu don't just go clock out and leave when no one has come in to take your place. It's an abomination that the patients were left unattended. PERIOD. When new shift workers were obviously not coming in to relieve the workers that were there THAT'S when you get on the fucking phone and you stay put until help arrives continuing to care for your patients because they REQUIRE 24/7 care.

Not one damn worker walked off the job thinking that magically new workers would be arriving the moment they walked off the floor of their unit. That's WHY a janitor, another non-care giver and one care giver remained behind - because they couldn't fathom leaving the patients entirely alone and unattended. If THEY knew that leaving meant there was going to be no one else to care for these people and that nothing was being done for others to care for and relocate them then you better bloody believe all the workers that walked off knew it TOO. There is simply no possible way they did not know when they left that they were leaving those patients entirely alone and helpless and that nothing was being done to replace the leaving workers nor the patients being relocated. They left those patients knowing full well there was no one that had come in or was going to come in to care for the patients. There is no way on earth they didn't know those patients were being totally abandoned because they LEFT without any replacement workers coming in FIRST. No decent human being would ever walk away from elderly and infirm patients needing all manner of care without being certain that BEFORE YOU LEAVE there are replacement workers there, and if there is some strange reason that none arrive you DON'T LEAVE and you get your ass on the phone for help.

There is no excuse whatsoever for these ASSHOLES that walked away from their patients with no replacement workers ALREADY THERE to take over. NONE. These shitbags have been working in this business plenty long enough to know WHY each unit has to stagger their breaks and meal times and why shift changes are timed so that the new shift workers are scheduled to be at work at least about a half hour before the finishing shift's shift is over - because patients are NEVER abandoned. EVER.

Every fucking day, we tell people that they are in this alone. Then when things like this happen we wonder why.

The people working at this center are all wage slaves, living in poverty, making as close to the minimum wage as their company could possibly get, wiping the asses of affluent seniors for pennies and being treated like shit and scorned by their management and society for doing it.

And I suspect, since the place was ordered closed, that there were serious problems going on at this facility prior to this catastrohic end -- problems that almost certainly left the few-remaining staff on the bottom working in a living hell. If those staff are told that this is their last shift, and to go home, who are they to argue? I doubt there was some mass exodus at the end of some final shift, just a few exhausted souls trickling out expecting someone in authority, someone making more than minimum wage, to handle it. And they left probably wondering if they would even get paid for their final two-weeks work.

If you want to get angry, that's fine, but be fair about it and don't direct it at the minimum wage slave, living on food stamps. If you want workers who act as professionals, you have to pay them and treat them as professionals.

Bullshit.

Let's first take a look at this "minimum wage slave" rubbish

http://www1.salary.com/Staff-Nurse-RN-Nursing-Home-salary.html
The median expected salary for a typical Staff Nurse - RN - Nursing Home in the United States is $54,121. This basic market pricing report was prepared using our Certified Compensation Professionals' analysis of survey data collected from thousands of HR departments at employers of all sizes, industries and geographies.

And here's average salaries for BSN staff nurses by years of experience:

http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/nursing-degrees/nursing-salary-guide/index.aspx
Less than 1 year - $50,822
1-4 years - $60,940
5-9 years - $66,854
10-19 years - $72,775
20 or more years - $77,660

(Note: These are the salary ranges for regular staff nurses - obviously, nursing supervisors and up get higher salaries)

Here's the average salary for a Nurses' Aide/Assistant/orderly (note at the link that it only requires a high school diploma which was all I had when I worked as a Nurses' Aide along with two weeks of paid training after I was hired):

http://www1.salary.com/Nursing-Assistant-salary.html
The median expected salary for a typical Nursing Assistant in the United States is $26,105. This basic market pricing report was prepared using our Certified Compensation Professionals' analysis of survey data collected from thousands of HR departments at employers of all sizes, industries and geographies.
(Note: Obviously the salary goes up with years of experience, but I couldn't find a website that wasn't crashing for a table)

Here's the average salary for nursing home pharmacists (average in bold):

http://work.chron.com/salary-pharmacist-working-nursing-home-4797.html
The mean annual income for pharmacists who worked in nursing and residential care facilities was $107,220 as of May 2011, according to the statistics bureau. The highest-paid 10 percent of pharmacists who worked in nursing homes earned $141,020 per year or more, while the lowest-paid 10 percent earned annual salaries of $71,970 or less.

Here's the average salaries for various office staff in nursing homes:
(Note: obviously, education and years of experience make for higher salaries - these averages include those people with nothing but a high school diploma and no previous experience)

http://work.chron.com/salary-comparison-nursing-home-office-managers-25245.html
Office Managers -
Office managers of "traditional" nursing care facilities earned $72,950 a year as of 2012. By comparison, those managing the offices in assisted living facilities earned roughly $6,000 less, at an average of $66,530 annually. At other residential care facilities, office managers averaged $66,700 a year.

http://work.chron.com/average-salary-nursing-home-office-staff-1651.html
Supervisors -
Supervisors plan and coordinate the activities of nursing home office staff. They determine and prioritize administrative tasks, hire, train and motivate employees and divide the workload. Supervisors also may handle customer service issues that cannot be resolved by other staff members. Generally speaking, employers prefer supervisors to have a high school diploma, though some college or a bachelor’s degree can be helpful. Nursing home supervisors made approximately $48,090 per year at the time of publication.

Accounting Clerks -
Accounting clerks handle a nursing home's financial transactions. In small facilities, they may act as bookkeepers in charge of all accounting records such as depreciating room furniture on tax forms and preparing staff paychecks. In larger institutions, they may be supervised by accountants and specialize in such tasks as receiving monthly payments for resident care or paying bills for medical supplies. A high school diploma and knowledge of computers, spreadsheets and bookkeeping software help these nursing home staff members perform their jobs successfully. Accounting clerks averaged $17.37 per hour or $36,120 per year at the time of publication.

Administrative Assistants -
Administrative assistants perform a nursing home's clerical functions. They file medical records, answer telephone and email inquiries, organize paperwork for the medical staff and receive guests for nursing home tours and resident visits. Nursing home administrative assistants typically have a high school diploma, or a business college certificate, and basic office and computer skills. Such administrative assistants earned a mean $15.12 per hour or $31,440 per year at the time of publication.

When we get into the upper echelons of nursing home staff like the Administrator, Assistant Administrator, etc. you can imagine what kind of salaries THEY get.



"Minimum wage slaves" my ASS. Even the lowest paid worker of nursing home staffing with no education other than a high school diploma and no experience is still no minimum wage slave, and that's the ludicrous argument you use defending what this ASSHOLES did by ABANDONING elder and infirm patients. The lowest paid person in this salary totem pole that could likely be called anything close to a minimum wage slave is the janitor - one of the three people who remained doing what they could for the patients WITHOUT PAY and without any knowledge or education or experience because he/she was a normal decent human being unwilling to just let those patients suffer and die without the care they required.

Yes, these people that ABANDONED their patients without so much as a single phone call to the police or SOMEONE to help them were supposed "professionals" - CARE GIVER PROFESSIONALS - who ABANDONED their patients to NO CARE WHATSOEVER save for the janitor, another non-care giver and one care giver professional that knows what being a professional and a decent human being MEANS not because they weren't being treated professionally (where the shit did THAT idea come from???), who were hardly minimum wage slaves, and KNEW by their leaving that they were ABANDONING their patients without any care and didn't even BOTHER to call anyone so something could be done about those patients these GHOULS left behind them without a backward glance to their fate. Even if they WERE minimum wage slaves or not being paid at ALL, they had no business ABANDONING these patients to somehow fend for themselves even those that CAN'T fend for themselves because nursing homes are full of people that aren't just old and infirm but paralyzed or on life support machines or in comas, have feeding tubes, catheters, IV's, require meds just to remain alive, have minds so gone they can't even think for themselves much less do for themselves, etc., etc. and all without so much as a fucking PHONE CALL to get them help.

These people that walked out ABANDONING their patients that require and PAY FOR continual care were not only not behaving like professionals they weren't even behaving like HUMAN BEINGS for which they should spend eternity in the lowest foulest dungeon of a jail cell. Yet here you are trying to excuse ABANDONING their patients to suffer and die with a vile diatribe about their being minimum wage slaves that they clearly are not as if even BEING a minimum wage slave could possibly excuse such a heinous utterly inhuman act.

I'll tell you what, even when working as a bartender at a dump with hardly any customers making a whopping $2.13 per hour + tips that hardly existed seeing as there were hardly any customers I still wouldn't have walked out the door at the end of my shift abandoning the BOOZE much less patients in need of nursing care to remain alive until my replacement bartender was behind the bar, and many times I HAVE done exactly that because though I'm just a lowly bartender with liquor in my hands and not other peoples' very LIVES and making far LESS than minimum wage with no vacation, no sick days, no personal days, no benefits, no nothing because I AM a professional and know how to act like one, and I'm also a human being that knows how to act like one. Any bartender that DID abandon the bar without a replacement bartender abandoning the BOOZE would be fired and never work as a bartender again and rightfully so. Yet, here you are making the most obnoxious and ludicrous excuse for all those nursing home CARE GIVER professionals that abandoned HUMAN BEINGS in need of continual nursing care to remain alive. My God, that is SICK. SICK. SICK.

We had one RN. She was the director of nursing, and she clearly made great money. She was also a worthless wretch, and I don't know that she ever even looked at a patient.

Each shift had one LPN who spent their shift distributing medications, charting, and doing any special care that was necessary.

Everything else was done by CNAs (which is what I was). On a typical night I had between a minimum of twenty and a maximum of forty patients. These patients were always non-ambulatory so they required full service care. So you know, there is no possible way to take proper care of that many people by yourself. It just cannot be done, and even at the time I was fairly sure that it was against the law. One time, due to a staff shortage, I actually had almost 80 patients. It was a freaking joke -- but who are you going to tell. Everyone is in on it, including the state and the doctors, and your just some flunky on the bottom, lower than the maintenance staff or janitor. Whenever the state inspectors came around it was ALWAYS on day shift, ALWAYS with prior notice, and the facility always bulked up the staff while the inspectors were there. That was the only time you would ever see any of the managment on the floor.

At that time, it would have been around 1990 I suppose, I was earning $5.50 an hour. Not $5.50 to start, that was it. That's what they were paying CNAs.

Would I have knowingly walked off and left patients to their doom? Of course not. No one would. But if they tell you to go home you go home. We weren't being paid even for what we already did, let alone above-and-beyond after hours concern. You did your eight and you hit the gate. Yeah, some of the people working there cared, but that was care they arrived with when they started the job. The job erroded that quickly enough. Care is expensive, it takes time, and you don't have that. You will only get concern from employees who are treated and paid like professionals.

Right now our for-profit healthcare system is a joke, and this is just one example of why. If we, as a society, want seniors to receive proper care then we, as a society, need to demand it and pay for it -- not throw up our hands and blame the people at the bottom when it goes haywire.

WTF???? How the hell can something like this happen? Who was this agency or whatever it was that closed the place and did nothing whatsoever to relocate the patients???? Holy shit, it's not like they're fucking office furniture that you can just shut the doors on and forget about until you get around to clearing it out!

WHY in hell did none of the workers think to call the police or SOMEONE for God's sake to deal with this heinous catastrophe? They just walked the fuck out???? I get it that they didn't want to work without being paid - who would - but why on earth did no one think to DO anything? Where the hell were the administrators whose JOB it is to deal with getting the patients relocated, giving notice to the workers and everything else that goes along with shutting a business down?

God almighty, why is this not national news???

Holy CRAP!

The question is, whose responsibility was it to transfer the people to another home? Those people need to be held accountable.

The people left behind were low income, no profit to be made.

Money before people.

what would you do if you were just fired and told to leave? You are already paid shit, what are you going to feed your family with? Think before you cast stones.