Nursing Homes Phase Out Alarms In Favor Of Proactive Care, Other Measures To Reduce Falls

The Associated Press: Nursing Homes Phasing Out Alarms To Reduce Falls
Alarms no longer go off when a resident shifts in bed or rises from a wheelchair at Oakwood Village Prairie Ridge in Madison. Nurses no longer place fall mats next to beds or lower beds to the floor when residents sleep. The changes, which took effect at the nursing facility in June, are part of a nationwide movement to phase out personal alarms and other long-used fall prevention measures in favor of more proactive, attentive care. Without alarms, nurses have to better learn residents' routines and accommodate their needs before they try to stand up and do it themselves. (7/2)

The Columbus Dispatch: Evictions From Nursing Homes Top Complaints
Complaints about seniors and younger disabled adults being evicted from nursing homes was the top-reported problem about long-term care facilities in Ohio in 2015. ... No one tracks evictions specifically, but there were 805 complaints in Ohioabout involuntary discharges or transfers last year, the majority of which — 653 — involved nursing homes, (Beverley) Laubert said. It's a troubling trend nationwide that is poised to get worse as the number of older adults grows, advocates say. (Pyle, 7/4)

And in Texas —

The Associated Press: Texas Accused Of Ignoring Mentally Disabled In Nursing Homes
It took more than 40 years for Leonard Barefield to finally get to choose where he lived. The intellectually-disabled Texas native moved to a group home in Lubbock in September after he had first lived in near slavery conditions for more than three decades in a squalid house in Iowa and worked at a turkey processing plant there for 41 cents an hour. After being freed by social workers from that situation, he was sent in 2008 to a nursing home in Midland, Texas. His plight is not uncommon in Texas, where people with such disabilities are routinely warehoused in nursing homes. (7/3)