Long-Term Care Hospitals Face Little Scrutiny

[groovedaddy]

No one at the hospital noticed that Tina Bell-Jackman was dying. On the night of June 26, 2007, Ms. Bell-Jackman turned restlessly in her bed in Room 7 at Select Specialty Hospital of Kansas City, a small medical center that specializes in treating chronically ill patients. Ms. Bell-Jackman, a 46-year-old with diabetes, had been hospitalized at Select for five weeks, was increasingly agitated and could not speak because of a surgical hole in her throat. Her physicians had ordered the hospital to keep a sitter with her.

But at 8 p.m., the sitter left, according to a state court lawsuit and a Medicare inspection report. Left alone, Ms. Bell-Jackman tried to get up. Around 9:30 p.m., staff members tied her down with wrist restraints. Around 12:15 a.m., after the restraints had been removed, a nurse injected her with a sedative to calm her.

In other hospitals, an attending physician might have seen Ms. Bell-Jackman. But the Select hospital of Kansas City has no doctors on its staff or its wards overnight. In emergencies, it must call in physicians from outside.

More than 400 similar facilities, called long-term acute care hospitals, have opened nationally in the last 25 years. Few of them have doctors on staff, and most are owned by for-profit companies. The Kansas City hospital is part of a chain called the Select Medical Corporation, a publicly traded Pennsylvania company that runs 89 long-term hospitals, more than any other company.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/health/policy/10care.html?th&emc=th

[MineralMan]

1. Minimum wage health aides are the standard

at those places. Few even speak English well. It's a shame on us.