By Katie Curley Katzman
Staff writer
—
BOSTON — The author of a bill aimed at protecting nursing home patients is praising state Rep. Harriett Stanley for her role in moving the legislation forward in a new form.
Dr. Rachel Geller penned An Act to Protect Nursing Home Residents over three years ago to protect people in nursing homes from abuse after Geller had a bad experience with her aunt, Sally Miller.
Sally Geller Miller, living with advanced Alzheimer's disease, was shuttled between five nursing homes in a seven-year period before being stranded for weeks in a hospital's locked psychiatric ward after being kicked out of one home.
Geller, the health care proxy for her aunt, said that at one point, when her aunt had gone to the hospital after being at a nursing home only for 24 hours, she was released permanently with no place to go.
It is an experience that has led state Rep. Ruth B. Balser, a Newton Democrat, to propose a law to better inform patients and family members about nursing home regulations.
"The existing problem is there are already very good laws on the books, yet nursing homes routinely lie, break the laws, follow illegal procedures and omit information," Geller said. "Because we as 'consumers' of nursing homes are unfamiliar with the nursing home regulations, we are automatically inclined to believe everything told to us by a nursing home."
Yesterday, the Joint Committee on Health Care Finance, of which Stanley was co-chairman, moved a rewritten form of the bill out of committee.
"The bill was redrafted and will go out favorably," Stanley said.
In a letter to The Daily News, Geller wrote that she feared Stanley was working to block the bill, but yesterday it moved forward with some practical changes that left Geller very satisfied that her goals were being served.
Stanley said the bill was rewritten to be more constructive and less authoritative than the bill Geller had originally written.
"We drafted it along with the Department of Public Health to provide a user-friendly booklet to give out," Stanley said. "We are a little less prescriptive and more constructive in dealing with consumers and nursing home residents."
Roseann Robillard of Newburyport's Council on Aging said any laws to protect the elder population make a difference.
"We need to protect the rights of elders," Robillard said. "You hear stories on all ends of the spectrum."
Robillard said to aid in protecting the rights of nursing home residents, an ombudsman program is already in place.
"The ombudsman is charged with mediating between residents and staff and look out for the rights of residents," Robillard said. "There is an Elder Services of the Merrimack Valley ombudsman program which provides people to put in the nursing homes as ombudsmen."
Robillard said it is these types of safeguards that protect the nursing home populations.
Geller, of Newton, said part of the problem is consumers don't know what their rights are and what the law says.
"Nursing homes follow standard operating procedures that violate the laws. How can it be that so many nursing homes have been allowed to develop procedures that violate the regulations which govern them?" Geller said. "I'm very pleased nursing homes will be required to give families a copy of the law in clear and understandable layperson's terms to enable us to better advocate for our loved ones in nursing homes."
While the bill still has more hurdles to clear before being signed into law, Geller said yesterday's vote is a step in the right direction.
"It's a nice legacy for her to have," Geller said. "She suffered unnecessarily at the hands of nursing homes. If her legacy is to make it so other people don't have to suffer, then she would be really proud of that."
