Yesterday my wife of 39 years passed away during a physical therapy activity in a skilled nursing/rehab facility. She had been suffering for over a year with leg and lower back pain that was keeping her up at night, and causing her to drift between her recliner and the bed to find a way to get comfortable. It took months to get medical care that would lead to a resolution, long waits for appointments with orthopedic and pain management physicians, sometimes more than a three month wait, because many of the doctors are either past retirement age or semi-retired, and there aren't many new physicians coming into the field.
And why is this the case? It's because corporations are buying up what not-for-profit competition remains, and taking the practice of medicine out of the hands of the experts who know what they are doing. Insurance companies dictate treatment, and if they want to get paid, doctors have no choice in the diagnosis or treatment.
During the long wait between appointments, her knee gave out and she fell, face first, on the kitchen floor. This put her in the emergency room and subsequently in the hospital for a week. What developed during her hospital stay was an inability to walk, because of the weakness in her right leg. So the recommendation was an extended stay in a skilled nursing center for physical and occupational therapy rehabilitation.
Medicare's rules and limitations on this, a development that happened during the first Trump administration, provide one hour of physical and occupational therapy five times a week in an in-patient skilled nursing facility while the patient basically sits around or lays around the other 23 hours. The name "skilled nursing" is a joke. Most of these facilities, including the one where my wife was admitted, are understaffed, and it is difficult to discern the qualifications of nurses, CNA's and physical therapy staffers.
On my wife's unit, with 20 patients, sometimes more, there was one nurse and two CNA's on duty every shift. So of course, the quality of care is questionable. They barely have time to help patients get to the bathroom and get their food, much less do any kind of physical activity to supplement their therapy. Yet that's what "skilled nursing" implies. It's what I expected, and what the social worker who sold us on the place hinted would happen. But that is not the case at all.
What actually occurred was that she was left lying in bed for long periods of time, sometimes as long as 20 hours, the response time to a buzzer for help, which the brochure said was 5 minutes or less, turned out to be as long as two hours, with not getting a response half the time she pressed the buzzer. "Use the diaper," was the response to many of her requests to be helped out of bed and to the toilet, a short five to ten minute break if that. And she would wait, sometimes up to three hours to get changed.
The reason patients are put in this kind of facility is that the cost of operation, because of the reduced staff, is less than a day in the hospital. Because medical care in this country now is not about a basic human right to health care, but about money, and how to make it off people's pain, suffering and indignity. The profits come off the top of the revenue in both corporate operated health insurance and corporate owned health care. What's left over is all that's left for operations, and if there's a shortage, too bad.
My wife's death was due to neglect. She was left in bed for over 24 hours from Saturday evening to Monday morning. During that time, it is very likely that she developed a blood clot, which came loose during her therapy exercise, and went to her heart. causing cardiac arrest and her death, in about 20 minutes. Neglect caused by the cost cutting measures so that a skilled nursing rehab facility's owner can make a profit.
And I will now become an activist and work for the complete overhaul of American health care and insurance. I will do it, motivated by the memory of my dear wife, a victim of the profiteering and the lack of consideration for basic human rights by this presidential administration.
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