The problem was systemic. Nursing home staff had too much to do in not enough time. At best, this meant neglect: Investigations found patients left in their own filth for days, infections and sores ignored, medical needs unmet and rehabilitation completely out of the question. “The dirt was indescribable,” testified one inspector to the United States Senate about homes she’d seen in New York. A doctor who treated patients from abusive nursing homes said they were often so dehydrated they couldn’t sweat or swallow. “The experience is so common in the hospitals in New York,” he testified, that “if you mention to a colleague that a new arrival is a nursing home patient, it means he is a comatose patient who has bedsores, is dehydrated and has pneumonia or urinary tract infection.”
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posted 2482 days ago