Florida Nursing Home Neglect Volunteers Fired For Advocating

The volunteers for Florida's Long Term Ombudsman program are responsible for investigating claims of nursing home abuse and assisted living facility neglect, monitoring facilities for poor conditions, and advocating for residents who often cannot speak up for themselves. Recently, many volunteers feel they have come under attack for doing their jobs.

Advocate Bill Hearne recounted a story to Governer Rick Scott's ALF Workgroup about a trip he took to an assisted living facility. While there, he witnessed a caregiver screaming at a resident who spilled his soup due to his shaking hands caused by Parkinson's disease. Hearne asked, “How would you like it if somebody spoke to your granddad like that?” After this and arguing to colleagues that their advocacy program was being systematically torn down by legislators with close ties to the industry, Hearne was told he no longer has the authority to inspect or even enter nursing homes or assisted living facilities.

Tampa Bay volunteer Rhodell Fields was berated for speaking out about the same situation. According to the Miami Herald, Fields resigned under pressure despite feeling, “strongly about the plight of those Floridians residing in this state's long-term care facilities.”

Many of the volunteers complained when chief ombudsman Jim Crochet changed the way in which volunteers were permitted to inspect homes. Rather than allowing them to do a general investigation of facility conditions, volunteers are now only permitted to speak directly to residents. Oftentimes, residents cannot communicate their complaints either due to their fear or due to mental illness. As a result, the inability to go beyond what the resident has to say can often make the investigation meaningless.

With all the media attention being brought to the problems of nursing home neglect and assisted living facility abuse, inspections should increase. Volunteers should have more authority to uncover dangerous conditions and mistreatment. Instead, the opposite is happening. It makes you wonder whether government officials are more concerned with potential political contributions from the long term care industry than protecting the elderly.