August 2019 – Article 1:
August 21st is “National Senior Citizens Day.” It’s intended to recognize and show appreciation for the value and contributions elderly persons have made to home, family, and society.
It also should be a time to honor the God-given right of Personhood for the elderly regardless of their physical or mental condition.
We don’t lose our Personhood just because we’re feeble, sick, or incapacitated in some other way. Innocent life must be protected from earliest biological beginning through natural death—with no exceptions.
Human Rights Ignored and Personhood Denied
Unfortunately, many so-called healthcare providers still don’t have the memo. An ongoing case in Alabama highlights this tragedy.
A 103-year-old woman with no terminal illness named Marian Leonard is being held at an Alabama hospice facility against her will.
Her daughter, Nancy Scott, also states that she is not being properly fed and that a state-appointed “guardian” has authorized doctors to give her powerful antipsychotic drugs despite the fact she has no history of mental illness.
According to Scott and the Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF), the state placed her mother in protective care and appointed a third-party guardian after wrongly believing that she moved her mother to home care against a doctor’s recommendation.
Ignoring Scott’s objections, her mother was transferred to Diversicare of Riverchase. Diversicare is a chain of nursing homes with dozens of centers in the Southeast. Their website claims they offer “short-term rehabilitation,” “complex medical care,” “long-term care,” “memory care,” “hospice care,” and “assisted living.”
Scott is now prevented from seeing her mother more than twice a month for one and one half per visit.
On one of her recent visits Scott claims her mother pleaded with her to take her home, saying “if you don’t get me out of here, they’re going to kill me.”
When Marion was first placed under the guardian’s custody, she could walk, was energetic, and was able to eat a regular diet. She is now bedridden, lethargic, and suffers with bedsores.
As of the writing of this article the situation had not been resolved.
Two recent reports from the federal Health and Human Services (HHS) department highlighted the fact that there continue to be serious problems in both hospice and nursing home facilities.
Hospice and Nursing Homes Endanger People
HHS determined that between 2012 and 2016, federal health inspectors cited 87% of hospices for deficiencies, with 20% of those serious enough to endanger the residents.
Unbelievably, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) doesn’t make such information available on “Hospice Compare,” its website for consumers even though it has the authority to do so.
Commenting on that failure, Nancy Harrison, a Deputy Regional Inspector General for HHS, said: “We live in a time when we don’t even think about booking a hotel without checking its ratings and reviews. Why do we demand less for hospices?”
Thousands of Neglect Cases Unreported
In addition, the same HHS Office of Inspector General recently called for a new focus on protecting frail people after finding nursing homes failed to report thousands of potential neglect and abuse cases of Medicare recipients, even though it’s a federal requirement to do so.
Focused on episodes serious enough that the people were taken straight from the nursing home to a hospital emergency room, investigators estimated that in 2016 about 6,600 cases reflected potential neglect or abuse that was not reported as required.
Overall, unreported cases worked out to be 18% of the 37,600 episodes in which Medicare recipients were taken to an emergency room in circumstances that raised red flags.
These are just a few examples of the dichotomy between science and compassion. On one hand we pat ourselves on the back for medical advances that allow people to live longer. On the other hand, when people reach advanced age, they are often mistreated on the notion that they are useless, too expensive to keep around, and therefore, should be just removed out of the way.
There are well qualified hospice and nursing home facilities, but as this article indicates, there can be problems.
Anyone faced with placing a loved one in hospice or nursing home care should consider these 22 questions to ask: https://dailycaring.com/how-to-find-the-best-hospice-care-22-key-questions/.
Whenever the Personhood of individuals is no longer recognized, there will be injustice, discrimination, and forced power over the weaker ones in society. The elderly should be treated with respect and dignity instead of pushed aside to waste away. Our society stands to learn much from those advancing in years. America is losing out by not giving them their due respect.
Sources: lifesitenews.com; modernhealthcare.com.
By Wayne DuBois
Georgia Right to Life
Media Relations Advisor