Task force targets violence in Ill. nursing homes

A pattern of assaults, rapes and murders in Illinois nursing homes has leaders from a half-dozen state agencies promising to come up with recommendations for Gov. Pat Quinn by the end of January.

"This is a very, very serious matter," said Michael Gelder, Quinn's senior health adviser, named by the governor to lead the new Nursing Home Safety Task Force.

"No one expects the residents to come out murdered, maimed or raped" when families place a loved one in a nursing home, Gelder said the group's met first meeting Thursday. Bureaucrats met by videoconference from Chicago and Springfield.

Agencies on the task force regulate nursing homes, protect residents' rights or screen potential residents, who increasingly have serious mental illnesses or violent criminal histories.

"We will do what we can within the state government's power to solve the problem of nursing home residents being in jeopardy," Gelder said.

In Illinois, elderly nursing home residents have been hurt by younger, stronger mentally ill people. In May 2008, Chicago nursing home resident Ivory Jackson was beaten into a coma by his much younger roommate. Jackson later died. The assailant, after a psychiatric review, was ruled unfit to stand trial and now lives in a state mental hospital

Nursing homes and state government need a watchdog, said Jackson's stepson, Russell Smith of Chicago, who did not attend Thursday's meeting. "The fact that nursing homes are overpopulated with ex-offenders shows up on their radar only after it's published in the paper," he said.

The meeting came one day after Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan called for unannounced inspections of nursing homes and revised criminal histories of identified offenders living in the facilities.

An Associated Press analysis found Illinois ranks highest in the nation in the number of mentally ill adults under age 65 living in nursing homes. The Chicago Tribune recently examined how violent convicted felons living in nursing homes put frail elderly at risk.

The task force will hold at least six hearings, Gelder said, the next on Oct. 20 in Chicago. The public is invited to comment at the hearings and on a Web site to be launched soon at http://www.nursinghomesafety.illinois.gov.

Since 1980, Illinois has shut down seven state-run mental hospitals, leaving only 1,480 public hospital beds for mental patients. Nursing homes took up the slack when the hospitals closed.

Mixing the mentally ill with the elderly makes economic sense for states. As long as a nursing home's mentally ill population stays under 50 percent, the federal government will help pay for the residents' care under Medicaid. Otherwise, the home is classified a mental institution, and the federal government won't pay.

Gelder said past closures of psychiatric hospitals didn't force Illinois to house the mentally ill and frail elderly together.

"Other states don't necessarily do it that way," Gelder said. "So we don't have to do it that way."

Gelder had stern words for nursing homes that collect government payments for mentally ill residents without providing the proper care.

"People with mental illness are not dollar signs, not from our perspective, and we really don't want to be working with people for whom people with mental illness are seen as a revenue source," Gelder said after the meeting.

Pat Comstock of the Health Care Council of Illinois, the state's largest nursing home trade group, said the state should consider a special license for nursing homes that serve both the mentally ill and the elderly.

Nursing homes also need a quicker way to get rid of residents who are violent. An involuntary discharge can take 90 days or more, she said. "That's way too long."

David Vinkler of AARP said the state's long-term care ombudsman program is underfunded. The ombudsmen work to protect residents' rights.

Wendy Meltzer of the advocacy group Illinois Citizens for Better Care said the meeting brought up important problems, but left out many, such as what she called the hesitancy of county prosecutors to deal with nursing home crimes.

"They just scratched the surface," Meltzer said of the task force.