I really struggled with the title because I wanted to use a term that was much more vulgar . . .

By Steve Moran

I really struggled with the title because I wanted to use a term that was much more vulgar . . .

Over the last two weeks I have read countless stories of amazing senior living teams that went way above and beyond in caring for residents in the hurricane zone. In some cases residents were moved and in other cases they hunkered down. We published one of those stories last week and there have been enough of them to write a book.

They were perfect examples of:

  • Courage

  • Sacrifice

  • Selfless sharing of resources

  • Planning

  • Adapting as things did not go according to plan

  • Team members going way above and beyond, many times at the expense of their families.

The bottom line in every one of these stories is that residents were well cared for and protected in the face of severe danger that was in every sense of the term “An Act of God” that was completely out of control of the senior living providers.

8 Dead

I am sure you have already seen the story it is everywhere. There was one nursing home in Florida, The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills where 8 residents died because of the storm. The roof didn’t blow off and the building was not destroyed.  

The first order blame is the lack of power and the heat . . .

THIS IS BEYOND OUTRAGE

The owner of this building had a legal and more importantly moral obligation to not let this happen. Don’t get me wrong, in an extreme crisis like this there are likely to be individual cases with very frail residents where there will be deaths that might not otherwise have happened. But 8 deaths is completely unacceptable!

Dominating The News

This one nursing home story dominates the news. When the public sees stories like this they lock into their brains “nursing homes kill” . . . “senior living and nursing homes are bad”. . . “I would never want to go there.”  

This does not represent senior living, it does not represent the nursing home industry. It appears this building and the leadership has a history of not doing the right thing. They have a Medicare Star Rating of just 1.8.  

I know there is this unwritten rule that we are never critical of the competition in public for fear that it makes us all look bad, but this cannot be a hard and fast rule.

We Must

We Must

We Must . . .

condemn this and say: “That is not us and they did wrong.”

Several years ago my friend Bill Thomas write an article suggesting that each year the bottom 10% of senior living communities should be closed . . . a kind of culling the herd. I wrote an article in response strongly disagreeing.   

Hearing about these deaths, makes me think maybe I was wrong and he was right!