respite care

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…]

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.

This story is not unique. Read the many comments at bottom of even worse treatment others have suffered after paying for “skilled nursing” care.

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:

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…]