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Families recount indignities to shift nursing home issue
By SHELBY OPPEL © St. Petersburg Times, published January 25, 2001 TALLAHASSEE -- Patricia McTier has seen the worst of Florida nursing homes, inside and out. For years, she worked in understaffed St. Petersburg facilities where doctors failed to dole out medicine, then lied about it. When her comatose brother became a patient, the indignities hit home. Like the time nurses neglected to wipe his nose for so long that mucus dried on his face. Half a dozen family members, all with horror stories like McTier's, packed a news conference Wednesday in Tallahassee designed to shift the debate over the state's nursing home industry from lawsuit reform to improving nursing home quality. The drive by the nursing home industry to limit patient lawsuits is expected to dominate this year's legislative session, which begins March 6. With Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican-controlled Legislature leaning toward new limits on damages for victims, the trial lawyers who oppose them know that McTier and her peers are their best ammunition. "If a dog was treated that way at a kennel, it would be closed down," McTier, 51, said of the care her brother received. McTier didn't sue the home for neglect when her brother died there in 1998 because she was too devastated by his death, she said. Other family members won a subsequent lawsuit over her stepmother's care in another St. Petersburg nursing home, McTier said. The dueling arguments by those who want to restrict lawsuits and others who fear limits raise the question: Which comes first? Industry critics say nursing homes must hire more employees, provide better training and pay them more to increase the quality of care at Florida's 746 nursing homes. Such improvements will lead to better care, they say, reducing the need for lawsuits. Certified nursing assistants, who earn an average of $6.94 an hour, care for 80 percent of the state's 80,000 nursing home residents, said Barbara Hengstebeck of the Coalition to Protect America's Elders. Federal standards suggest two hours of nursing assistant care per day per resident, or the patient is at risk of dying, Hengstebeck said. In Florida, the average patient receives 1.7 hours of care per day, she said. But industry representatives say such arguments are backward, that the first step is for lawmakers to rein in the lawyers. Without limits, quality of care becomes irrelevant, since skyrocketing insurance and legal costs will push the homes out of business. The industry posted its own representatives outside its opponents' news conference to ensure that reporters heard both sides. "You cannot provide good care if all your funds are being drained through litigation," argued Freddie Franklin, a Tallahassee nursing home administrator and past president of the Florida Health Care Association, which represents about 90 percent of the state's nursing homes. Last year, lawmakers assigned a task force the job of solving the debate, but the group failed to agree on any recommendations. Bush and Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan, who led the task force, have called for limits on damages. "This is just more smoke and mirrors from the trial lawyers," said Katie Baur, a spokeswoman for Bush. "Unless they are willing to address nursing home litigation reform, nursing homes will be closing."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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From the Times state desk
From the state wire
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