Nursing home profits up, resident care stinks

Large Wall Street investment companies have been buying nursing homes in recent years. As such investors have acquired nursing homes, they frequently cut expenses, book increased profits, and quickly flip the facilities to new owners. Sometimes these service cuts cause the level of case at homes owned by private investors to dip below minmum legal requirements. Residents of such cut-rate facilities may suffer increased incidents of depression, loss of mobility, loss of ability to dress and bathe themselves, and more bedsores and easily preventable infections.

Usually, the first thing new owners do is lay off nurses and other staff responsible for patient care and safety.

In the past, the families of suffering residents might sue. This is no longer an easy solution, however, because the complex legal structures of private investor/owners makes it hard to determine who really owns, and who is responsible for staffing, a particular facility.

These Byzantine structures often unjustly protect investors who profit while patient care declines.