Healthcare reform and the Kern Valley Healthcare District

I took a visit to our much beleaguered skilled nursing facility today, talking to the residents and wondering about the relationship between elder care and healthcare reform.

My feeling is that the residents of our nursing center or any nursing center need to be treated with respect and dignity, realizing these people were once young, had lives, families, jobs, opinions, likes, dislikes, goals, the same as the rest of us running around in the world.

They may not be able to live alone, or be cared for by busy working families, but the new reform must include monies to show that here in America we do respect our elders and we will stick by them to the end. (a natural end hopefully)

When you look at the horrifying record at KVHD in the past few years, you see a good example of what some of the major problems are with healthcare.

Short staffing a nursing home is pretty much saying that they are not worth the time, trouble or money. I strongly disagree.

But that is what happened here at our SNF, in the Kern River Valley. When the CFO, of the hospital, Chet Beedle, took out his pencil and calculator, the money disappeared from the nursing center, and the quality of care with it.

The nursing home administrator/CEO, Pam Ott, lead the way to allowing a new type of reform in the nursing center three years ago, which was medicating patients to the point of not needing much staff to care for them. It was all about the money, not the residents or their families.

In fact, a family member, who had promised her mother before she died that she would take her back home to the heartland, was told by Mr. Beedle that she could not collect the tiny sum offered by the federal government for burial costs. It was all of $200, but the family had to fight to get it.

She eventually got this money, but not after a very disgusting display on the part of the old administration, and current CFO.

Is it more money that's needed or is it a change in the way we look at our elderly residents?

It will have to be both.

When I looked in the eyes of the residents today I wondered what medicines are being used now. Has KVHD and its prescribing staff, now not under threat from the leadership, being more rational or conservative in its approach?

The pharmaceutical industry was let loose to run the world on TV with advertisements which began a whole new look at medicine. Oh, we need to give you our drugs and we will even show you how to talk your doctor into getting them for you.

Thanks, big brother. I hope you've been paid off well.

Drugs to cure foot fungus which can take out your liver? This industry is pumping out stuff like a cancer upon society. They're no better than the drug dealers living around the corner from you. If you're depressed, don't take a walk or talk out an argument or change jobs: pop a pill, you'll feel better.

I actually was in the Rural Health Clinic one day and could not stand it that the tissue boxes, the pens, the brochures, the posters, were covered in pharmaceutical ads, so I put graffiti on all of them. (Yeah, that was me)

The elderly have been over medicated for years. Partially because that generation had a trust in the medical profession and didn't question their doctors and caretakers.

I shared a bathroom with my grandmother and couldn't fit my toothbrush in the medicine cabinet as it was full of prescription bottles. Though I was young, I questioned the amount of pill popping she was doing. And the fact that she was forgetful, was she taking them the correct way.

Her decline I attribute to the healthcare she received. I'm sure the pharmaceutical companies would laud praise on themselves for keeping us alive longer, but I'm not so sure that is the case. I know far too many people who have been damaged by pharma, and I am also one of them.

Even over the counter drugs have serious side effects, but we throw them in our shopping carts like it couldn't happen to us.

You can keep a heart pumping with all sorts of drugs and procedures, but can you keep a heart laughing and happy?

In a nursing home, who are you going to question and really, will anyone listen?

Three years ago, the nursing home administrator, Pam Ott, didn't listen to the staff, residents or even the families who questioned the staffing and medications. How disrespectful and cruel to avoid contacting families and explaining the risks of certain medicines. It's an illegal and sometimes deadly practice.

I recently had surgery and while in the hospital was given an overdose of drugs. I told them it was an overdose, but even my protests were not heard. I was threatened that if I didn't take the whole dose, I would get none at all. So, I did. And then, only afterwards, did they check and find their mistake.

So, if they could do it to me, the biggest mouth in the west, then the people most at risk are the elderly and infirm. We have certainly seen that here at KVHD. There's no denying that anymore.

But how can we change this? How can we be more compassionate?

Yes, caring for the elderly and disabled is no easy task, but what about other options?

Like natural vitamins, emotional support and alternative therapies. Lets quit giving our lives and the lives of our seniors over to the pharmaceutical industry.

Yes, it would require more staffing and money to put our grandma in a spa tub to relieve her arthritis pain than it would to take some multi-side effect pain reliever.

Could a patient stiffened from Parkinson's disease use a daily massage and some aroma therapy rather than just leaving them alone in this probably terrifying condition.

I wondered as I looked at one woman today if she had enough vitamin D to process her calcium, as she has seen little sunlight in recent years.

We all know as we age we don't digest and assimilate our food as well, gaining all the nutrients we need. What about a serious focus on nutrition just for the elderly? A multi vitamin is not going to make up for quality nutrition.

Increasing the quality of life in nursing homes could be expensive, so should we just not do it?

But American medicine is about who makes the money and that's the bottom line. Currently, Pharma is winning.

Reform our minds first and realize how ludicrous it is to allow these drugs with so many dangerous side effects to be the first course of action. It has become part of our culture.

Even children are being over medicated. Little Bobby was acting out in class, and the teacher recommends that he might need to be seen by a doctor and get on some medicine. He could be ADHD or anxious, so a little Ritalin or antidepressant might help. (Him or the teacher?)

Finally, we need to reform the thought that the elderly are just "soaking up" the funds when they have reached a certain age. Hey, they worked, raised families, and produced money which went into the government coffers which are so easily depleted these days for some pretty ridiculous things.

We are "all" hopefully going to get old and we may suffer illness, unable to help ourselves some day, how do you want to be treated?

Think about it and take the time to join the national discussion on healthcare reform right here in the valley next week. See, Town Hall meeting post below.