Below is a very sad story sent to me today from another state where a woman was isolated from her children after the children posted in detail how the nursing home was abusing the mother and other residents.

The nursing home used the GAL then to isolate the children from their mother and lock her down.

http://silveradosucks.com/silverado-senior-living-threats-censorship-tied-to-medicare-violations/

Unfortunately, these stories are rampant. Nursing homes get worse and worse with little meaningful inspections. Resdients (and the US govt) pay $4,000 to $7,000 per month (depending on the size of the estate), to put the resident in a nursing home bed, provide 1/10 of a $8 per hour employee per day (at home you would spend $150 per day for 100% hands on care and it would be less), feed the seniors cheap processed food from a food service (read, balogna sandwiches, processed eggs or mostly cereal for breakfast, etc. or about $2 per day for meals) and reap huge profits in a variety of ways already published here.

Nursing homes are inspected about once every 5 years across the US, if that.  A report of abuse (beating, starvation, hydration) will NOT bring an inspector out necessarily.  As in the Sykes case, the agencies are peppered with “inspectors” that ignore and do no meaningful inspections and just about always find in favor of the nursing home (ask John Wyman, his mother was beat with bruises, near death, and he had to submit the paperwork 3 times to get a finiding of “abuse indicated”–months later).

Now the nursing homes check social media, Yelp, etc. and demand the information come down.

Then they further abuse and isolate the senior–with permission of the court and the investigative agencies.

Dissidence in the US is no longer protected in the US where lucrative nursing home contracts are involved–it is crushed, the seniors further abused, and with a vengeance.

Of course, Ken and I have reported to askdoj@doj.gov and you all should do the same.

joanne