It’s not secret that many of the patients had nursing homes suffer abuse. As I reported earlier, on Recruiting Blogs.com in an article entitled Ninety Percent of the Nursing Homes Hire Those With Criminal Records, it is small wonder the frail and the informed are subject to everything from physical and emotional abuse to being victims of theft.
There are numerous reports and a variety of studies about the shoddy hiring practices and the related abuse at nursing homes. Some of it can be attributable to the old adage that good help is hard to find. One factor is the low pay for employees at nursing homes. And, finally, some recruiting and staffing groups are just trying to get their people hired. If they run background checks at all,t hey are limited and often not subject to careful review. Why ruin the prospects of a decent commission for getting your people hired? Little things like previous criminal records and a history of drug abuse should never get in the way. And if your potential nursing home employees did abuse patients at other institutions, why stir things up by conducting comprehensive background checks? In these cases, background checks are just a necessary function, and evil, and not something that serves to filter out the bad guys from the good.
According to an article in World News Report, the Federal Government will be funding grants for states to use to conduct background checks on job applicants at nursing homes. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has started providing grants to states to establish programs to guarantee comprehensive criminal background checks of applicants who will have direct patient care responsibilities. This will add a new level of accountability to facilities as they can now run background checks on the government arm or explain to the courts, following abusive actions, why they never bothered looking into their employee’s criminal history.
Maybe this will have some effect on the abuses the elderly must suffer. Not only is there the direct abuse, physical and mental, but abuse out of negligence, dehydration, bed sores, and malnutrition due to substandard care.
It is tough enough to grow old and deal with illness and possible incapacitation. No senior person needs to be abused as an extra measure of risk and humiliation.
