In July 1998, Helen Love, a 75-year-old, 95-pound woman, was attacked by a nurse aide at a Sacramento nursing home because she soiled her diaper. When Mrs. Love's family learned of the abuse and brought her to a hospital emergency room, doctors found that she had sustained severe bruising, a broken neck and a broken wrist. Mrs. Love died less than two months later from her injuries.

Investigators discovered that Mrs. Love's assailant had been previously dismissed from two nursing homes for his aggressive behavior toward elderly patients. The caregiver pled guilty to the abuse and served one year in the Sacramento County Jail for his assault on Mrs. Love.

Elderly Abuse in Nursing Homes: A Growing Problem

Unfortunately, Helen Love's story is not unique. A 2002 report published in the Journal of Health Care Law and Policy states that abuse and neglect are “widespread, unreported, infrequently prosecuted and the cause of untold suffering, injury, illness and death.”

In 2001, a Congressional report revealed that 5,283 nursing homes—more than 30 percent of the 17,000 nursing homes nationwide—were cited for abuse violations from January 1999 through December 2000. Of the 9,000 violations reported, 1,600 were serious enough to directly harm residents or place them in immediate danger of injury or death. Sadly, nursing home abuse appears to be on the rise, with reports of abuse doubling from 1996 to 2000.

And this may be just the tip of the iceberg. While dramatic stories of nursing home abuse like Mrs. Love's occur far too often, they are less frequent than the everyday abuse elderly patients suffer when their basic needs are neglected. Patient fatalities due to neglect often go unreported. Physicians frequently list a general cause of death like “heart failure” on the death certificates of nursing home residents. In actuality, the root cause of death may be the untreated malnutrition, dehydration, or systemic infections from skin sores that lead to the heart failure. Government inspectors and medical experts agree that up to 85% of these conditions may be preventable with proper nursing care.

As the “baby boom” generation ages, the demand for nursing home care will continue to grow. Meanwhile, the national shortage of caregivers shows no sign of abating. Combined, these two factors will likely put even more pressure on an already over-stressed system.