by Stephen M. Garcia
Attorney-at-Law
Garcia, Artigliere & Shadrack
When a Minnesota nursing home advocate was admitted to a nursing home facility for a week of rehabilitation after surgery on her right arm, her experience was so bad that she checked herself out of the facility 25 hours later.
Although staying at “one of the best [nursing homes] in the state,” Deb Holtz, Minnesota’s Ombudsman for Long-Term Care, felt she was treated as a checkmark on someone’s to-do list. She felt robbed of her dignity and humiliated.
The majority of nursing home residents and their loved ones do not have Holtz’s knowledge. At its best, this results in a resident feeling powerless and demeaned, and at its worse, makes them vulnerable to nursing home abuse and neglect.
As an ombudsman, Holtz knew that she had the right to be treated with dignity and respect. After doing a skin check of Holtz’s hands and feet – as part of the facility’s admission procedure – staff told her to pull down her pants. Holtz felt as if she was being strip searched and knew the skin check was designed for immobilized patients.
Holtz refused to cooperate. She explained to the nurse that she did not need the skin check and told the nurse to write on her chart that she had refused treatment. It was the knowledge that she could decline treatment at-will that helped to protect Holtz from becoming a checkmark on the nurse’s daily to-do list.
Holtz also knew that instead of being left to sit alone in her room, someone should have come in to conduct an admissions meeting, where she would be informed of her rights as a resident of a nursing home. After 5 hours alone in her room, the only person Holtz saw was a staff member who came in to offer her dinner.
Saying that things started to go wrong almost immediately, Holtz told the Star Tribune, “I know it sounds completely irrational, but part of me didn’t want to go to sleep that night because I didn’t know who would come into my room and do any more checks. It was very dehumanizing.”
Holtz’s experience makes it clear how important it is to have laws that protect residents in need of short and long-term care and how critical it is for residents and their loved ones to know their rights. Theoretically, The Nursing Home Reform Act, passed in 1987, protects residents from experiences such as Holtz’s, but her story is not an uncommon one.
The Nursing Home Reform Act requires that nursing home residents in a facility that receives Medicare and/or Medicaid (or Medi-Cal in California) funds are given whatever services are necessary to help them to function at their highest possible level. It guarantees certain rights to residents. Residents’ rights are protected on both the state and federal levels.
According to Medicare’s Resident Bill of Rights, you have the right to:
- Be fully informed — in language you can understand – about your health.
- Participate in all aspects of your medical care, including participating in your care plan, in which doctors you see, and in all decisions regarding treatment.
- Make independent choices, including choosing what activities you want to participate in at the facility and the schedule in which you want to do things.
- Privacy and Confidentiality.
- Manage your own financial affairs.
- Be free from charges for services which are covered by Medicare or Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California).
- Make a complaint and to be free of the fear of retaliation.
- Visit and to be visited when and where you please.
- Be protected from unfair transfers and discharges.
- Be free from nursing home abuse and neglect.
At no time is the nursing home allowed to violate or to restrict these rights.
During the admission process, the nursing home facility has the duty to inform you of your rights. They are required to give you a copy of your Resident Bill of Rights.
Holtz was lucky; she knew her rights. And she knew that “the best nursing home” was violating those rights.
If you suspect that a loved one is suffering nursing home abuse or neglect, contact Garcia, Artigliere & Shadrack for a free consultation.