An emergency physician with whom I am close told me he has seen a woman in the emergency room who lives in a nursing home. She suffers from some of the usual problems our elders who wind up in these holding pens to eternity endure. She has had a debilitating stroke which renders her unable to walk without assistance. She has enough dementia to forget she has a disability that makes it impossible for her to walk. She climbs out of her bed now and falls to the floor. She has been seen twice this past week due to falls.
The rub: the US Department of Health and Human Services has ruled the nursing homes can no longer put up bed rails on such patients as they consider it a form of restraints.
Really, HHS, really?
The inmates have taken over the asylum!
It is just a matter of time until she falls and has a fractured hip or a brain bleed. How do they justify seat belts in cars? How long before carseats for infants and side rails for cribs are outlawed? These are the same people, right?
Jackson Delano Maybolt, President, Urban Poverty Law Center
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