Should residents of any Arkansas nursing home have the same legal right to photograph and record their living space as any homeowner or lessee? Certainly seems reasonable and logical enough.
It's also a legitimate moral question a House committee wrongheadedly dismissed in committee last week, assuring that House Bill 1932 offered by Democratic state Rep. Greg Leding of Fayetteville could not become law. That's worse than shameful considering our state's abysmal record of neglect and abuse.
While some aspects of nursing home care in Arkansas admirably have improved, I also agree with Martha Deaver of Conway that by and large the quality of care has remained "grossly the same."
Deaver, who heads the group Arkansas Advocates for Nursing Home reforms, testified to members of the Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs Committee last week that AARP ranks us near the bottom of all states while inspection reports confirm a grim and chronic record of "mistreatment and neglect happening to far too many of our family members who live in nursing homes."
Leding's failed bill would have allowed a long-term-care resident, or her guardian, to install video or audio devices in her room to help document the quality of her care. The cameras also could have been installed in common areas.
In shared rooms, both residents would have had to agree on installing such a device, or one could be moved to a residence with a like-minded roommate.
Sure sounds like a morally sound concept to me, especially in today's high-tech world. Even police departments are turning to cameras to legally record the nature of their encounters and arrests.
As I expected, the politically connected and contributing nursing-home industry responsible for properly caring for their residents showed up en masse at the hearing to complain about legalizing such required documentation of their tax-supported product and performance.
And we've seen just how far and deep this group's financial clout can extend into legislative and judicial processes that the pollyannas among us believe are designed to be honorable and fair to all citizens. It's ugly and unacceptable influence in my book when it comes to ensuring quality of care for the most defenseless and dependent among us.
In her speech, Deaver unleashed a barrage of relevant facts on the committee that went undisputed by nursing-home representatives who were quietly listening, perhaps even twiddling their thumbs. She reviewed the terrible 2003 case in Fordyce of an 81-year-old woman who was savagely beaten to death in her Dallas County nursing-home bed.
"It wasn't that long ago when two nursing assistants crept into Willie Mae Ryan's room and did the unthinkable," she said. "One held her down, while the other beat the struggling, defenseless ... woman's face with a pair of brass knuckles. The assault mangled Ms. Ryan's facial bones leaving her barely recognizable to her family."
That horrific event made national headlines, said Deaver, while establishing a "pivotal moment in the care of our parents and grandparents who live in Arkansas' 229 nursing homes."
She told the elected lawmakers she wished things had significantly improved since that horror story.
Records show in the past three years state regulators cited every Arkansas nursing home for one or more deficiencies involving the violation of residents' rights. "Nearly two-thirds of all homes had 20 or more citations and almost half were cited for actual harm or immediate jeopardy to residents," she continued, "resulting in nearly $2 million in federal fines. The numbers don't lie, In the past six years, according to government data, there has been over 7,000 violations cited for harm or the potential for death. In 2012 alone there were 2,500."
Every year there are hundreds of unexplained and documented bruises, lacerations, and broken bones, she testified. "Last month I dealt with a case where another resident sexually assaulted a 27- year-old physically and mentally disabled resident ... If we're kept in the dark by not knowing who is causing the harm, then we can't collectively fix the problems that endanger our loved ones."
The federal government has established that citizens confined in these facilities are considered residents, not patients, with the same rights as any other resident of any house or home. That includes the right to set up cameras to monitor children or activities in one's own home. And from what I can see, there's still nothing short of a home's policy that would prevent a resident from having a camera or recorder in her space.
Yet the members of this committee, by again genuflecting to the nursing-home lobby as opposed to standing up for the rights and abilities of our weakest citizens without voices, said such a law that ensures this right isn't worth considering.
In what was the pinnacle of an ironic moment, one representative at the hearing disclosed that he kept a camera in his own home to monitor babysitters when he and his wife were away. How nice to know he can have some reliable video information about the treatment of his own loved one should that become necessary.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 03/29/2015