Facility Fails to Notify Doc of Festering Open Wound
Charles Bradley was 93 years old and a resident at Everett Care and Rehabilitation. I use the word "was" because Charles Bradley is no longer with us. He died as a result of neglect at the facility:
In court documents, attorneys for Bradley's family claim staff at the nursing home left a wound on the elderly man untreated for months. That injury, apparently the result of an undiagnosed penile cancer, purportedly contributed to his death.
The saddest part here...the staff noticed it. They noticed it and told their supervisor, who simply didn't tell the doctor. Over the course of months, Charles' penis essentially fell apart.
The saddest part? The nursing director investigated the situation and found no impropriety. The state disagreed: "There was no evidence the facility had contracted their social services department or the resident's family."
This begs two questions.
1) What on Earth will it take for a nursing director to find impropriety during an investigation? If you can't find it when there's a festering wound on a resident's genitalia, a wound that you noticed daily as you changed the resident's adult diapers, then what exactly will it take?
2) When is the state going to realize that the reform needed has to come through hitting these egregious errors with stiff penalties. I know I sound like a broken record here, but true reform will only come when the costs of compliance are less than the costs of non-compliance. Resident's are simply debits and credits in the accounting books to these facilities.
