Families who make the difficult decision to place an elderly relative in a residential care or assisted living home must then ask: Which home?
Vermonters entrust residents to 133 state-regulated facilities that can accommodate more than 3,000 residents. These places do not provide the level of care available in nursing homes and aren鈥檛 regulated as vigorously. Some are mom-and-pop operations; others have out-of-state corporate owners.
They market themselves as offering personalized care and a comfortable lifestyle. And some do.
But by 开云体育 Radio and , reveals that some seniors in these facilities live in challenging circumstances. To report our stories, we obtained five and a half years worth of complaints and state inspections, detailed in thousands of pages of documents.
The data show that seniors have wandered from homes, sometimes in the dead of Vermont winter. They鈥檝e been given the wrong dosage of medicine and fed cheap, high-sodium foods. Seniors have been assaulted, exploited and treated in undignified ways by employees at some facilities.
We to help us better understand how often homes are cited and what happens 鈥� and doesn鈥檛 鈥� when they鈥檙e caught violating state regulations. We used it to inform our interviews with state regulators, families, advocates and care-home operators.
To assist consumers, we鈥檙e also launching . This database, searchable by facility name or location, lists the number of complaints against each home and contains complete inspection reports for both residential care homes and assisted living facilities.
VPR and Seven Days teamed up to share the workload and to make sure the stories reach the widest possible audience.
Look for our stories over the next three weeks.
Stories
- [Nov. 27]
- [Nov. 27]
- [Dec. 4]
- [Dec. 4]
- Vermont Edition: [Dec. 9]
- [Dec. 11]
- [Dec. 11]
Resources
- Looking for info about a specific home?
- Got a story to share? Tell us what鈥檚 happening at your elder care home at [email protected].
- Have a complaint about an eldercare home? Alert state regulators at
- Want to report elder abuse? In an emergency, call 911. You can also reach Adult Protective Services at [email protected] or by calling 1-800-564-1612 or by visiting .
The Team
VPR
- Editor: Mark Davis
- Reporter: Emily Corwin
SEVEN DAYS
- Editors: Matthew Roy, Candace Page
- Data Editor: Andrea Suozzo
- Reporter: Derek Brouwer
- Photographer: James Buck
