Nursing Home Advocate Appalled by Nursing Home Experience
A Minnesota nursing home advocate was admitted to a nursing home for a week of rehabilitation after surgery on her right arm. Her experience was so bad that she checked herself out of the facility 25 hours later.
Although staying at “one of the best [nursing homes] in the state,” Deb Holtz, Minnesota’s Ombudsman for Long-Term Care, felt she was treated as a checkmark on someone’s to-do list. She was afforded no dignity.
You, as a nursing home resident, have rights. Unfortunately, many residents and their caregivers are unaware of what their rights are.
The Nursing Home Reform Law, passed in 1987, specifically outlines the rights of nursing home residents.
Nursing home residents in facilities that accept Medicare and/or Medicaid (or Medi-Cal in California) funds, are entitled to services that will help them to function at their highest possible level. This right is protected on both the state and federal levels.
According to Medicare’s Resident Bill of Rights, you have the right to:
- Be fully informed — in language you can understand – about your health.
- Participate in all aspects of your medical care, including participating in your care plan, in what doctors you see, and in all decisions regarding treatment.
- Make independent choices, including choosing what activities you want to participate in at the facility and the schedule in which you want to do things.
- Privacy and Confidentiality.
- Manage your own financial affairs.
- Be free from charges for services which are covered by Medicare or Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California).
- Make a complaint and to be free of the fear of retaliation.
- Visit and to be visited when and where you please.
- Be protected from unfair transfers and discharges.
- To be free from nursing home abuse and neglect.
At no time is the nursing home allowed to restrict or to violate these rights.
During the admission process, the nursing home facility has the duty to inform you of your rights. They are required to give you a copy of the Resident Bill of Rights.
Holtz was lucky; she knew her rights. And she knew that “the best nursing home” was violating those rights.
