Nursing homes should be some of the safest and best maintained Hoosier residences. After all, those who live in these care facilities are some of our most vulnerable: people who need daily lifestyle help due to frailty or illness. However, the disturbing truth is this is far from the reality facing many of our nursing home residents today. An appalling number of those living in Indiana nursing home care facilities face shockingly unacceptable risks of serious injury or death.
As injury advocates serving Indiana and Illinois, we routinely warn of the dangers facing our community’s nursing home residents due to COVID as well as from nursing home abuse and neglect, see, e.g.:
- Rising Danger of Nursing Home Injury: Federal Review Stayed Until 2022;
- COVID Dangers in the Nursing Homes of Illinois and Indiana;
- 2019 Senate Report List Reveals Worst Nursing Homes in Indiana and Illinois;
- Nursing Home Abuse in Indiana and Illinois: Abuse, Neglect, Exploitation of the Elderly; and
- New Online Warning for Nursing Home Abuse or Neglect: Indiana and Illinois Both Rank “Bottom of the Barrel”.
Indy Star Exposé Delves into Indiana Nursing Home Failures
In a continuing series of articles, the Indy Star has investigated the various Indiana nursing homes operating in the Hoosier State, both those operating for-profit as well as the non-profit organizations. This eighteen-month exposé has revealed some very disturbing facts about the likelihood of a resident suffering from abuse, neglect, or other forms of Indiana nursing home injury.
From “Indiana Nursing Homes: Takeaways from IndyStar’s Investigation,” published on December 31, 2020, by the Indy Star, comes the following:
1] Diversion of Millions in Medicaid funding So It Never Reaches the Nursing Home Facility
According to IndyStar research, Indiana gets more of specific Medicaid funds allotted to government-owned nursing homes than any other state ($679 Million in 2019). Much of this money is then diverted to other places for other purposes, like building new hospitals. It is not helping the state’s least fortunate who depend upon Medicaid funding for their nursing home stays.
For details, read the March 2020 piece that discusses how Indiana county hospitals “have been gaming the Medicaid system.”
2] Not Hiring Adequate Nursing Home Staff Endangers Residents
Part of the financial investigation by the journalists revealed Indiana nursing homes have not hired enough people to work in these care facilities. In fact, the IndyStar investigation team discovered that when the Coronavirus Pandemic hit in March 2020, the Hoosier State had fewer staff to help in state nursing home care facilities than almost any other state in the country (ranking 48th).
This failure to have enough staff correlates directly with the likelihood of a nursing home resident becoming injured, ill, or dying in the nursing home. Not enough staff puts people at risk of severe bodily injury or death.
How does inadequate staffing translate into personal injury or wrongful death? Quoting from the IndyStar, this heart-wrenching explanation:
“The human toll is detailed in inspection reports and malpractice claims involving injuries or deaths that may have been prevented with adequate staffing: bed sores allowed to fester until limbs had to be amputated, repeated falls that left residents with broken bones or fatal head injuries, and violent attacks among unsupervised residents.”
And that was before the pandemic.
“As the virus swept through the nation, it killed Indiana nursing home residents at higher rates than in most other states. More than 20% of nursing home residents who have contracted the virus have died in Indiana. The national rate is 13%.”
The Danger Zone for Indiana Nursing Home Residents
The IndyStar’s December 2020 conclusory piece details not only infuriating instances of alleged fraud involving millions of dollars, but how attempts at legislative reform have failed to solve these problems.
Today, the sad truth is that Hoosiers who live in nursing home care facilities are still dealing with the great dangers identified by the IndyStar exposé. Simply stated, nursing homes in Indiana are dangerous for residents.
There is no change on the horizon for these people and their loved ones. After the IndyStar exposé, there may now be the hope for change.
Of course, we applaud the efforts of the journalists. We seek to join with others in promoting greater public awareness of this unacceptable state of affairs in our beloved state. We encourage the reading of every piece of the 18-month IndyStar investigation.
Meanwhile, the most tragic and maddening inevitability here is that we know, as advocates for those who have been harmed in care facilities, that there will be preventable accidents and needless deaths in Indiana nursing homes. People are going to be severely harmed or killed by negligent or intentional acts before substantive changes are made in the Indiana nursing home industry system.
For these victims and their loved ones, the only avenue for justice will be in the aftermath of tragedy through the filing of legal causes of action. They will be forced, as they deal with grief and heartbreak, to speak in the only language many of these corporations apparently understand, as they cavalierly put profits over people.
To learn more about legal redress for nursing home injuries, see:
- Nursing Home Injury Claims for Victims in Indiana and Illinois;
- Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect in Illinois and Indiana: Finding Justice;
- Nursing Home Lawsuits in Indiana and Illinois: Who Can Be Sued, and Why, for Elder Abuse or Neglect; and
- Illinois and Indiana: High Risk of Nursing Home Injuries from Abuse or Neglect.
For Indiana nursing home residents, there is a very real danger of harm resulting from abuse or neglect at the care facility. Please be careful out there.
