Best of the
101 Good things about nursing homes

The Nursing Home Industry recently suggested that there were 101 good things about Nursing Homes in a childish public relations deception. Nursing home residents, former residents and advocates label the list “101 Lies of the Nursing Home Industry.” The following are some of the Nursing Home Industry’s fabrications followed by the comments of what you can actually expect living in a nursing home.

• Protect privacy and dignity - If you don't mind being stripped naked in front of strangers, wearing your shoes on the wrong feet and having all of your personal property stolen.

• Promote good health with flu and pneumonia immunizations – Although in a nursing home, even with preventive immunization, you have a higher chance of contracting these illnesses.

• Pick up and deliver mail, just like having your own community post office – So everyone knows whom you got mail from (privacy and dignity?); and what part of the United States doesn’t have a post office?

• Keep patients safe in a secured, monitored environment – Although the incident of rape, abuse and theft are greater in a nursing home.

• Monitor patients around the clock and make routine medical assessments including breathing, skin coloring and behavior changes – Medical assessments of you are made by untrained and underpaid staff.

• Help families adjust to their loved one’s illness – By locking you away.

• Follow physician-prescribed therapeutic diets – On the two days a year that inspectors show up.

• Work with consulting pharmacists who use computerized systems to monitor drug interactions – Because you will never get to see or talk with a pharmacist.

• Provide round-the-clock care for more than 35,000 patients [in Tennessee] – The national average for actual care is less than two hours of direct contact a day.

• Work with finer motor skills to help patients with things like brushing hair, buttoning shirts or using forks – Untrained, unmotivated, minimum wage rehabilitation. 

• Provide information to the community about long-term care – So the nursing home industry continues to get a $70 billion subsidy from the taxpayers.

• Develop care plans with an interdisciplinary team, in full consultation with the patient and family – You will love being a “patient” in your “home.”

• Schedule regular church services and host clergy visits for patients and families from diverse religious backgrounds – Regardless of your personal religious beliefs.

• Design a care plan that helps avoid the need for physical or chemical restraints – Remember that those tools are always at OUR disposal.

• Have someone available to talk to, anytime, day or night – Yourself.

• Make careers in long-term care possible through continuing education scholarships – In order to lower our labor cost.

• Prepare for emergencies with backup generators and other safeguards – Nothing will interrupt the billing process!

• Share with families step-by-step information on how the patient will be cared for – Ignoring your wants and desires. 

• Offer counseling and guidance on advance directives and living wills – So we can profit from you once you are dead also.

• Offer peace of mind for families when keeping a loved one at home is no longer an option – Guilt-free incarceration subsidized by the state.

• Make dining and activity rooms available for socializing and special events – Which we choose.

• Identify patients at risk for accidents and/or falls and use procedures and special equipment to prevent injuries – Leaving you in bed.

• Offer on-site x-rays and medical lab services – For our convenience.

• Give on-staff social workers the tools they need to act as advocates for both patients and families – To ensure WE get paid.

• Administer and monitor tube feeding devices, as ordered by the doctor, for patients whose conditions make oral feeding impossible – We want to be very clear that your condition must be such that: (1) oral feeding is IMPOSSIBLE; and further (2) it must be ORDERED by a physician. 

• Provide nutritional supplements – Because the food sucks.

• Push wheelchairs around the grounds to make sure everyone enjoys a little stroll – But don’t operate the wheelchair on your own or you will not get out of bed tomorrow. P.S.: This never happens in a nursing home.

• Welcome volunteers of every age to help with special programs and just to let patients know that they have friends – Another great way of providing free untrained labor.

• Open facility doors to the community by making therapy, specialized equipment and other resources available – For more profit.

• Assure that patients receive adequate amounts of fluid to prevent dehydration and maintain good health – “Bread and water is our motto.”

• Mark special events like birthdays and holidays with parties and celebrations – The dignity of being treated like a child will overwhelm you.

• Make the services of beauticians and barbers available to keep patients looking good – But it comes out of your 30 bucks a month.

• Compete for state and national awards that recognize quality – Paying fines for incompetence and inadequacy with your taxes.

• Deliver The Right Care at the Right Time as a fundamental link in the continuum of long-term care – Because we at the nursing home lobby and in the for-profit nursing home industry are making huge amounts of money off the myth that long-term care depends on facilities.

- Tim Wheat