Florida has long been known as a retiree haven, with a thriving assisted living industry.
But, as the Miami Herald reports, because of cruel managers and regulatory failures, what goes on inside some of the state’s assisted living facilities serving the elderly, as well as the mentally ill, can be terrifying.
The Herald dug up reports of a series of preventable deaths at assisted living facilities across the state:
In Kendall, a 74-year-old woman was bound for more than six hours, the restraints pulled so tightly they ripped into her skin and killed her.
In Hialeah, a 71-year-old man with mental illness died from burns after he was left in a bathtub filled with scalding water.
In Clearwater, a 75-year-old Alzheimer’s patient was torn apart by an alligator after he wandered from his assisted-living facility for the fourth time.
One of the serial abusers was Bruce Hall, who owned and operated the Sunshine Acres Loving Care facility in Washington County, in the state’s northern panhandle. Employing a regime of physical violence, humiliation, and threats of withholding food and drugs, he sowed fear among the residents under his care for more than a decade.
In addition to the cruelty, there also was incompetence. After Hall fell asleep in the middle of an overnight monitoring shift, a resident suffering from mental illness wandered off the premises and drowned in a nearby pond.
What’s more, the tragedy occurred after state regulators tried to inspect Sunshine Acres in 2004 after receiving reports of abusive conduct, and Hall ran them off the property while yelling about “government intrusion.” At that point, the state could have chosen to shut the facility or suspend Hall’s license but, instead, it did nothing. A similar visit in 2008 had a similar result, with regulators leaving the property under threat from Hall.
Such weak regulatory oversight has been commonplace. The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration, or AHCA, was created to oversee Florida’s 2,850 assisted-living facilities, but regulators often fail to carry out their duties. An average of nearly one assisted living resident dies in Florida every month because of neglect. AHCA has had 70 cases in which it was legally permitted to shut down an assisted-living facility because of violations, but the agency has done so just seven times.
Despite laws explicitly prohibiting the use of restraints, they are commonplace, in large part because of AHCA’s lack of enforcement, the Herald reports. When fines are imposed, the agency regularly reduces their size.
On five occasions, other state agencies, filling a void left by AHCA’s inaction, have led the charge to shut offending assisted living communities. In the case of Sunshine Acres, it was the outcry from the neighboring community, not the official body charged with regulating the facility, that eventually forced Hall to sell the property in 2009 after running it for 14 years.
