Long-Term Care Survey Alert

Published on Tue Mar 16, 2004 PDF

Paul Hollings, executive director for Neville Center at Fresh Pond in Cambridge, MA, offered this month's most "notable quote," a new Long-Term Care Survey Alert feature. Read what he has to say about quality of care v. quality of life in nursing homes.
 
"The great myth about nursing homes is that the quality of care is poor ... the vast majority of facilities provide good care, but the press picks up on the sensational stories about the rare instances of appallingly bad care. If a resident in southern New Mexico dies from an infected Stage IV pressure ulcer, it makes the papers in Boston. No one writes about the resident who died of loneliness down the street. Yet if you talk to staff who work in nursing homes, they will tell you the reason they don't want to live in one isn't because they are afraid of developing a nosocomial infection or pressure sores ... it's the fear of loneliness, social isolation and a lack of meaning in life."

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