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January 12, 2023 By e-Patient Dave 1 Comment

Integracare Assisted Living charged us full price. Severely understaffed, they stiffed us.

Recently I’ve posted about horror stories that have happened as investor-driven chains get into hospice (here) and nursing homes (here). More broadly, nursing homes and assisted living are called long-term care, aka LTC.

For our mother and family, LTC has meant Less Than Caring. Last night, I posted My family’s disastrous experience with a growth-driven long-term care company, starting with this:

As many of you know, my mother died in October. What we haven’t disclosed until now is that it happened in horror story #3: she passed after a single week of “respite care” provided by the local outlet of a growing chain of assisted living facilities.

Many people asked who it is, and we’re ready to say: the chain is Integracare, and the local facility near Mom’s home in Annapolis is Bay Village.

Here’s how they advertise themselves. It does not in any way match our experience.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: consumerism, long-term care, patient safety, respite care, The Big Ugly 1 Comment

January 11, 2023 By e-Patient Dave 19 Comments

My family’s disastrous experience with a growth-driven long-term care company

Photo of memorial tree at Quiet Waters park, next to the gazebo where she loved to sit
Mom loved to sit in this gazebo, along a tributary of the Chesapeake. Photo by my sister.

I’ve been blogging recently about what happens in American healthcare when predatory investor-driven companies start moving into care industries because of, as Pro Publica puts it, “easy money and a lack of regulation.” My first two posts were about recent articles in The New Yorker on companies that are more interested in sales growth than in caring:

  • “For-profit hospice is a vast crime scene, and private equity is holding the knife”
  • Healthcare’s moral crime scene, part 2: private equity takes over a nursing home

As many of you know, my mother died in October. What we haven’t disclosed until now is that it happened in horror story #3: she passed after a single week of “respite care” provided by the local outlet of a growing chain of assisted living facilities.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: consumerism, long-term care, patient safety, Patients as Consumers, respite care, Uncategorized 19 Comments

December 8, 2022 By e-Patient Dave 1 Comment

2022 Hospital Safety Grades announced at Leapfrog Group’s annual meeting: excellence and the power of transparency

On Tuesday I attended one of the most inspiring events in the annual calendar of health events: the Leapfrog Group’s annual meeting and awards ceremony. I could talk all day about what an important organization this is, because they don’t just do great work, they’re getting results in the world.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: consumerism, patient safety 1 Comment

April 26, 2020 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Semmelweis: The gross, tragic story of when humanity learned handwashing saves lives

On Saturday I heard a podcast that gave me a deeper, more sobering version of a story I heard years ago: the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, the doctor who figured out that he could stop killing women (in obstetrics) by washing his hands. Of course they tie it to how important handwashing is in fighting COVID-19, and why.


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Coronavirus, patient safety Leave a Comment

November 8, 2017 By e-Patient Dave 2 Comments

“Only two of our sewage leaks were in ORs.” KNOW YOUR HOSPITAL’S SAFETY GRADE.

Snapshot of USA Today article, Sept. 17, 2017.

I am way behind in things I want to blog about – I started this post eight weeks ago. It’s been a combination of crazy travel, lack of sleep, and a head-spinning disbelief about how messed up medicine is, on so many things, while in other cases it accomplishes stunning saves (like saving my life). Such wild swings in quality always mean a system is out of control, which means you better make a point of learning what you can about who manages things best.

Here’s one of those topics. I hope to be able to dump out all these thoughts, good and bad, in the coming weeks.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: patient safety 2 Comments

May 16, 2016 By e-Patient Dave 10 Comments

What questions should researchers ask about “the weekend effect” in hospitals?

Death rate for stroke patients (red line) is worse as nurse coverage shrinks
Death rate for stroke patients (red line) is worse as nurse coverage shrinks. From wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_effect May 16, 2016

Update: I’ve changed the headline, because people kept answering the wrong question.:-) The right question is here:

Attention patient voices around the world: what questions should researchers look at to see if there is a difference between weekend and weekday services in hospitals?

In the UK a major debate is underway about the weekend effect in hospital services: are they less safe, how are they different, etc?  The image at right, from Wikipedia, is one example: the red line shows that death rate for stroke patients improves dramatically when nurse coverage is not close to zero.

I’m on the BMJ editors’ patient panel, and Rosamund Snow, the BMJ’s patient editor, points out that from the patient’s perspective there’s a lot more to look at than death rate.

That’s a pretty crude measure of whether a hospital’s performance is affected, eh? “What are you complaining about? She didn’t die, did she?” What about things like falls, medication errors, access to needed surgery, and on and on and on.

So Rosamund has decided to seek patient thoughts on the subject, hallelujah.

Of course UK experience is important but what are your experiences in any country? Mostly we’re seeking patient experience, but physician experience in other countries could be useful, especially if a system made a change that created a clear difference, better or worse. Both data and anecdotes are welcome.

Most important, though: What questions should researchers look at to see if there is a difference between weekend and weekday services?

Filed Under: Health policy, patient safety 10 Comments

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