Managers at a nursing home were prepared to cope with the power outages and had enough food for days, but then the looting began. The Covenant Home’s bus driver surrendered the vehicle to carjackers after being threatened.
Bands of people drove by the nursing home, shouting to residents, “Get out!'’ On Wednesday, 80 residents, most of them in wheelchairs, were being evacuated to other nursing homes in the state.
“We had enough food for 10 days,'’ said Peggy Hoffman, the home’s executive director. “Now we’ll have to equip our department heads with guns and teach them how to shoot.'’
I haven’t found much in the news about how Hurricane Katrina is affecting Nursing Homes. I did find this very troubling snippet:
While concerned about his brother’s well-being, Booth also was saying a prayer for the residents of a nursing home in New Orleans where two of his friends work as nurses. The administrator of the nursing home had rented city buses to help transport residents from the facility. However, when Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, commandeered the city’s bus fleet for a mandatory evacuation, that left the nursing home in a lurch.
“There were 150 senior citizens left with no way to move to safer ground. They were just stuck,” he said.
(emphasis added)
What do you suppose the surveyors will do with that situation? Will they say that the nursing home should have anticipated this?
First, if you are doing your own IDR rebuttal, make sure that every page from a resident’s chart (even if it is a back page) has the resident’s name and a date on it. Second, make sure the names and dates are legible.
Many times, a facility’s defense to treatment issues is the fact that the resident or responsible family members refused treatment or diagnostic tests. This defense will not fly unless you are able to demonstrate informed consent on the part of the resident or responsible family members. Thus, if the resident refuses labs that may, for instance, detect problems with dehydration–it is important that the physician clearly informs the resident or family members of the risks of refusing such labs.
If you are trying to administer medication , and he says “I don’t want it”, inform him of the possible consequences of not taking is medication. Then document the chart with the information and his response.
If you don’t have this sort of information in the chart, you won’t win on this issue.