Bill, I'm very active in an organization that lobbies for standards of care in the nursing home industry in Kentucky. Because of what I've seen as a long-time caregiver and activist, I don't and won't play nursing homes or assisted living places, but choose instead to donate the proceeds of one of my weekly jobs to our organization and to produce public education pieces, seminars and other awareness P/R projects...no charge. Sadly, the "for profit" nursing home lobby organizations are strong, influential, very profitable and vigorously fight efforts to set care standards. In Kentucky, there are few, if any staffing requirements (in terms of workers per population) and few requirements for staff training and background checks, resulting in abuses, neglect, suffering and unnecessary deaths.

I check the ratings of nursing homes often, and sometimes the ones with the worst ratings are the ones you wouldn't suspect.

If I were in the business of playing for nursing homes and assisted living places, I would want to know the rating and would not have anything to do with the bad ones. Actually, playing in nursing homes is not ever going to happen. When representatives from local facilities approach me at restaurant gigs, they quickly disappear when I tell them my name.

I thought that people here who play these kinds of places would be interested in the ratings of the places they work, and using the website listed above is an easy way to check things out.

In the 14 years I was a caregiver, I was involved in care giving at 7 nursing homes and assisted living places. One of the very fancy ones (I'm talking uniformed servers and a gent in a tux playing a grand piano for every meal) has an unacceptable-bottom care level rating.

The best I've seen is a VA. The really bad ones (numerous fines, multiple failed inspections, pulling of Medicare and Medicaid funds, illnesses and deaths, abuse I've seen first-hand attributed to incompetence, lack of training, etc....even closings) were large national organizations. Thing is, all the money in the world won't always get good care. In the case of both my in-laws, who could afford the best care available, they reached a point where they didn't meet the requirements of the home (couldn't get to the dining area on his own; a broken hip for her), they were asked to leave. The only places available in the state were the "bottom of the barrel" "for profits" who are always in trouble.

If you checked out the places you play, you'd be pleased at some and really disappointed by others. I just looked at the ratings of the homes in Dayton. It just took a few minutes, and it's pretty easy to separate the good ones from the bad ones.

This is just an FYI from someone who thinks that the nursing home and assisted living industries in this country are national disasters.

And someone who works daily, commits thousands of hours yearly and who donates as much as possible to try to do something about it. The hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable of our citizens deserve better.


Russ



[This message has been edited by captain Russ (edited 05-14-2010).]