There are an estimated 5,000 Jewish patients in proprietary nursing homes in the New York metropolitan area which were severely criticized today by the American Jewish Congress as institutions “where concern is absent, care is inadequate and dignity disregarded.” The agency charged “negligence” by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and urged a broadly based citizens’ campaign to demand higher standards and stricter enforcement procedures to overcome “the neglect and abuse that characterize nursing home care” in the private, profit-making homes.
In a 40-page report, the AJ Congress said that despite federal expenditures of more than $3 billion annually on institutional and other care for the aged, “tens of thousands of nursing home patients suffer from indifferent treatment and disregard of their human needs. The medical services they receive are perfunctory, the nursing care minimal, the personal attention often non-existent.” The study also found that citizens groups were “indifferent” and government agencies “almost lackadaisical in their supervision, despite their heavy financial involvement.”
Martin Hochbaum, staff urbanologist of the agency, prepared the study, based on information from government reports, books, monographs, interviews with nursing home patients and staff, and an analysis of reports on Medicare-certified facilities prepared by government inspection teams. The report said the study was limited to proprietary homes listed as “skilled nursing facilities” for the elderly who need in-patient medical care on a daily basis. Such homes receive government funds through Medicare and Medicaid and are regulated by HEW and state agencies.
CHARGE JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS IGNORE PROBLEM
Nursing homes with a heavy concentration of Jewish patients were the primary focus of the study, the AJ Congress reported. The number of Jewish patients in such homes was based on a report in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, indicating that there were 14,183 beds in the proprietary homes and that 33 percent of the patients were Jewish. Data on the total number of New York Jewish patients in all types of nursing homes were not available.
The report said that while one of nine American Jews is now over 65 and that in 20 years the ratio will be one out of 6, “the Jewish community seems to share in the general lack of concern with the nursing home situation. Jewish organizations, except those directly involved in nursing home programs or in other services for the ill and aged, have paid little or no attention to the problem.” Naomi Levine, AJ Congress executive director, urged civic and religious groups to join forces for reform by putting pressure on government agencies, “on the medical fraternity and on the operators of proprietary homes themselves.” She said conditions in nursing homes both in New York “and throughout the country” needed reform.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
