February 23, 2021 Julia Rock and David Sirota
https://portside.org/2021-02-23/how-wall-street-killed-grandma
“20,000 nursing home residents died from 2004 to 2016 because they lived in nursing homes run by private equity firms, according to updated data.“
“We find that [private equity] ownership leads to a 3 percent decline in hours per patient-day supplied by the frontline nursing assistants who provide the vast majority of caregiving hours and perform crucial well-being services such as mobility assistance, personal interaction, and cleaning to minimize infection risk and ensure sanitary conditions,” reported the study’s authors.
In total, the researchers found that staffing levels in private equity-owned nursing homes were 1.4 percent lower than staff levels in other facilities. The staff reduction mostly impacted patients who were older but less sick, concluded the researchers, because “there may be less scope to reduce the costs of care for the sicker patients, as they have explicit medical needs.”
There are more than a few family members who have made note of the decline in quality of servicing and proper staffing at the facilities acquired by Pacifica Companies, formerly known as Keiro Nursing and Retirement Homes. This article seems to be provide context of a larger trend consistent with corporate objectives.
