We're running out of time to fix nursing homes
NCPR wins national award; Letter-writer Bernice Mennis to speak at library
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The complaints sounded familiar.
Employees at five nursing homes owned by Centers Health Care - including the Glens Falls Center - picketed for a new contract on Thursday and listing some disturbing grievances about staffing.
They complained of a revolving door of staff, minimum wages for support staff and a failure to meet minimum staffing levels as required by state law.
That cannot be tolerated.
Nursing homes are supposed to be staffed with at least one certified nursing assistant for every 10 patients. One of the those picketing Thursday said it was closer to one CNA for 40 residents.
Eleven years ago we at The Post-Star sent out a warning to our readers with the five-part series "Who will take care of us?"
In Chapter 21 of The Last American Newspaper, I described the crisis that was coming:
Over the next five weeks, our reporters established that the crushing weight of the aging Baby Boomers would strain the limits of elderly health care in the years to come.
“This is a generation that has changed much about the U.S. society - from music to sex, to how Americans consume goods and services - and as its members flood into retirement and trickle into nursing homes, they will change how the country cares for its old people,” Post-Star reporter Jon Alexander wrote in Part 1.
This was a warning shot across all our bows, a call to action that if we wanted grandma and grandpa, mom and dad, and eventually each of us to truly have golden years, we needed to address it now.
Alexander reported the elderly would have more needs in the coming years than in the past because they were living longer. He acknowledged the current model for nursing homes was not sustainable. There was not enough capacity.
Alexander reported the eight nursing homes in our region accounted for 930 beds, but the homes were regularly short-staffed and needed nurses from private agencies to fill staffing gaps.
Some homes were already developing services so more of the elderly could remain in their own homes longer with partial care.
At the heart of the series was a demand for our readers to pay attention to something - their own mortality - that they probably didn’t want to think about.
But despite the continuous debate over health care, insurance coverage and the prescription drug crisis almost no one is talking about nursing homes.
At a community forum at SUNY Adirondack earlier this year, it was reported that while seniors are a much larger portion of the electorate these days, less is being spent on their needs.
Andrew Cruickshank, the CEO of Fort Hudson Health System, told one of our reporters 11 years ago then if you make it to age 70, there is a good chance you will require long-term care at a skilled nursing facility at some point during the remainder of your life. For many of us retired, that should be a wake-up call.
Hearing the complaints this past week of nursing home professionals should concern all of us because it appears conditions are getting worse, not better.
Back in 2013, we were warning our readers that the future of elderly care would be compromised.
We wrote in an editorial after Part 1:
We believe this will be the next great crisis our country must face as we struggle for care for our fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers as they once took care of us."
Unfortunately for many of us, that time is now.
In 2016, the New York Comptroller's Office criticized the Department of Health for nursing home oversight problems. It found the department was short-staff on enforcement referrals and was unable to process complaints in a timely manner.
“The state Health Department needs to strengthen its enforcement policies to better protect the health and well-being of nursing home residents across the state,” State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said when the report was released. “DOH is not using the full array of enforcement actions available and this trend has recently worsened, taking the teeth out of a significant deterrent to unsafe practices and conditions. DOH officials deserve credit for their timely inspection of nursing homes but more must be done. Families need to know their loved ones have safe accommodations and providers are being held accountable when problems are found.”
In 2017, local counties got out of the nursing home business and corporate owners like Centers Health Care took over. By 2018, Centers Health Care owned 53 nursing homes across New York state and the Northeast.
But by February 2018, there was a rash of complaints over conditions and staffing.
Our Post-Star editorial board asked for a meeting with the Centers Health Care management team. There was one telling moment during the meeting. When we asked if there was a staffing problem at the Warren Center in Queensbury, the director of nursing and the social worker from the Warren Center both began nodding vigorously, but the corporate managers insisted it was not a problem.
By that time, the newspaper was also experiencing staffing shortages due to steady layoffs that hindered our ability to do investigative reporting. One nurse's aid reached out to us at the time about the staff shortages and submitted a video of one a nurse sleeping while working the overnight shift. She insisted it happened regularly.
Unfortunately, we never did complete our investigation, but reporter Don Lehman provided some valuable reporting in 2018. He reported on one case where a 94-year-old had bedsores and was regularly left in a soiled diaper for hours. This was one of many complaints brought to the newspaper by a group of relatives as a last resort.
Again, the problem was staffing, especially on weekends.
Ironically, Centers Health Care saw all its ratings improve at the local facilities.
One family member told Lehman she was not surprised the ratings improved because staff told her they were tipped off about when state inspectors were coming.
It should have come as no surprise during Covid in 2020 that nursing home residents fared so badly.
It sounded like little has changed in 2024.
One employee told The Post-Star that it is a "revolving door" for nursing assistants.
"They come in, they realized there's no staff, you're not getting paid enough and you're working short, so it makes it very difficult," the employee said.
It was good to see Assemblywoman Carrier Woerner at the event.
"This has been incredibly eye-opening, at the horrible conditions these dedicated workers are being forced to work in," Woerner said to The Post-Star.
But it shouldn't be eye-opening.
The conditions have been like this for more than a decade.
"There's no way that this facility is meeting it's obligations under the state's safe staffing rules, and the Department of Health and Department of Labor need to serious investigate what's going on here," Woerner said.
She's right.
And I'm hoping Woerner leads the charge and gets Sen. Dan Stec and Assemblyman Matt Simpson behind her on this cause as well.
This protest at Glens Falls Center is not about getting paid more money. It's about refusing to tolerate our elderly being put at risk.
Most of us will turn the page on this protest because we do not have a mother, father or spouse who needs the care.
Yet.
Unfortunately, it is more than likely we will all be in that position at some point in the future.
Remember Harrison Freer
The North Country Light Brigade was out on Saturday evening with a personal rememberance of Town Board member and one of their own, Harrison Freer.
Stefanik says... Huh?
Rep. Elise Stefanik posted on social media this week "Kamala Harris would continue her war on American energy and send costs even higher."
This past year, the United States energy production increased 4 percent to its highest level ever while demand dropped 1 percent.
Doctor of letters
If you have read The Post-Star for any length of time, you will recognized the name Bernice Mennis.
Bernice has been a loyal letter-writer for as long as I can remember.
Bernice wrote so many letters, she decided to preserve them in book form. She will be discussion her book of letters - that does that make her a doctor of letters? - at Crandall Library on Wednesday, Aug, 21 at 6:30 p.m. The book is titled "Under 300 words: Letters to a local newspaper."
High honors
North Country Public Radio continues to make a difference in the Adirondacks.
"In essence, the Murrow judges found that NCPR produced the best news of any small market radio station in the country," said NCPR News Director David Sommerstein. "This award is a tribute to the hard work of not only our incredible news and digital teams, but also to our fundraising and development crews and our dedicated donors around the North Country and beyond who make our work possible."
Congratulations to NCPR for its continued excellent journalism.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
I think our current era will be named The Age Of Hypocrisy. The nursing home crisis is an extension of the health care dilemma we are in, and it is so clearly illustrated by the price of milk and gas crisis we are being told we are in by some. If and when a solution or any mitigating action is proposed, it is shot down as Socialist. Health insurance industry is a major market that does not have a real costumer , the providers and the insured alike do battler with them, and the outcome is always the same. Your doctor wastes as much time with them as she spends with you and who is better off for it? The insurance company is better off and you, (who pays them to do it), and the doctors have wasted time and energy trying to get you the care you need took part in a exercise to deny you care. Nursing homes are the final insult when it comes to taking care of the people who took care of us, and they are expensive. There is usually only one outcome from a nursing home. We can fix it so they are a place of dignity and comfort, we don't. We continue to pile dump trucks full of cash on the executives and shareholders of insurance companies while compiling about the cost to house Grandma. Read HR 676, it makes so much sense, it is doable and might actually cost less. Anyone who says we have the best health care in the world hasn't need it yet.
I have been visiting a dear friend who is at Warren Center on Gurney Lane in Queensbury. She is 100 years old and her mind is still quite sharp, her body, not so much. She had hopes of leaving that place to be transferred to Fort Hudson and had been told she was at the top of their list. That was months ago, and recently she told me she is beginning to be reconciled with her fate. Being in a nursing home that is understaffed is demoralizing and dehumanizing. I believe the same thing could be said for mental and health care our veterans, young and old! No one deserves that in "the richest and most advanced country in the world". And, you're right Ken, many of us are headed toward this fate if nothing changes. Thank you for bring this terrible reality to the fore. Hypocrisy and greed reigns supreme!