I hope you are not referring to the nursing facility. It it very hard work dealing with elderly folks that need nursing care. I could not have more respect or praise for the aides, LPNs, RNs and her PA that took care of my Mom in her last 3 years. Would you want to take care of a cranky, deaf old man that pees and craps his diapers all day like my father-in-law for $10 an hour? I know I couldn't.
I was operations director/safety officer for a long term acute care facility (hospital) for 3 years. You have two separate work groups; clinical side, the doctors, nurses, aides, pharmacists etc., and operational facility support side, housekeepers, maintenance, groundskeepers, security, all equipment etc. I was in charge of the support side, facility safety, JAHCO and AHCA compliance and all medical equipment maintenance. Many of these people have severe medical, mental and emotional issues and some are sweet and some are violent. There are strict federal and state policies on how they are dealt with which were not followed from what I read in the article (huge lawsuit coming I promise).
That said I had housekeepers cleaning up biological nightmares for $9.00/hour. We were constantly understaffed medical staff and support staff even though federal regulations have minimum staffing requirements for clinical and support staff (no one from JAHCO or AHCA our government watchdog agencies care). With under staffing comes stuff not getting done, pharmaceutical issuing errors and patients waiting a long time for help, patients not getting baths etc. The money is coming in but being misappropriated in some cases.
The other half of the equation is in 2010 the federal government approved a 10% medicaid cut to all medical facilities for services rendered but no services to medicaid patients could be cut. Plus all medical facilities also had to donate a 10% value of their total medicaid income in free medical care to those who could not afford it. Then in 2012 they cut another 10% but again no services could be cut. How do you run a business with those drastic financial cuts?
I was salary putting in 55-60 hour weeks and aside from my administrative duties I was cleaning bathrooms, folding and setting linen out, maintenance and repairs to allow my staff to be compliant with regulations regarding their duties on the patient floors. I had administrative staff complaining their offices and their bathrooms did not get cleaned, oh well patients come first. I also had medical administrative staff ignore patients concerns because they would not get off their high horse to help their respective staffs with no consequences from the watchdog agencies.
I was constantly fighting with the CEO's to get staff according to staffing guidelines and with the CNO (chief nursing officer) my counterpart in the medical side because she would not staff to man and update software in her medical equipment but left it on my plate even though she had a budget for it. I was responsible for fixing and safety checks of her medical equipment but she was responsible for software changes as that required a doctors orders to set it up for a patient but she insisted I do it even though I was not clinically licensed. I would not do that and we fought constantly (she never learned the password into the system so she could print the patient paperwork she needed, I had to do that). Medical staff turnover was 110%. In the three years I was there we had 4 CEO's, 5 CNO's, 4 HR Directors, 3 Quality Control Managers, and 6 Case Managers. I did a new hire medical orientation class almost every month. In the three years I was there I only lost one elderly woman housekeeping staff to a compensation case where a large male patient pushed her across the room and she fell over a trash can.
Bottom line is we are in real trouble in our medical industry in this country.
Mikey
