Bad Manners in Nursing Homes

This investigation conducted on several establishments reveals a deep malaise and institutional paradoxes where the efforts of some, exhausting themselves in taking care of life, too often collide with the insatiable quests for profits of others. Malaise, paradoxes and complacency or passivity of supervisory authorities who deny the lack of means that they endorse and that SUD Santé Sociaux never ceases to denounce.

Mediapart has investigated several establishments, both public and private, that malfunction in this way, with residents being neglected at the end of the chain. Often due to a lack of time, staff, and sometimes also due to anger or weariness. Such failures can have relatively “benign” consequences, such as poorly cleaned rooms or a dressing gown that is never washed. They can also lead to residents being hospitalized, for lack of having been properly cared for in their last place of residence.

At the beginning of July, the families of residents of the Val de Brion nursing home in Langon received a very surprising letter in which the director of the establishment informed them that “given the budget deficit” from which their EHPAD would suffer, some care for the elderly would be reduced. “On certain days when there will be fewer staff, the most dependent residents will not be systematically lifted and some, lifted in the chair, will be left in their night clothes.” Further on, the director takes care to specify that “in the event of difficulty, washing times will be shortened.”

Not getting elderly people out of bed, not dressing them, reducing washing, or even sacrificing maintenance of the premises due to lack of staff… How does a public EHPAD, under the supervision of the Sud-Gironde hospital center, come to admit that it will not provide its minimum service, due to lack of resources? “This letter had been intended as a preventative measure, at the beginning of July, for certain weekends in the summer in the event of unforeseen absenteeism, and it was probably misunderstood,” temporizes Raphaël Bouchard, director of the hospital. The Val de Brion EHPAD would have been, in a way, the victim of its own desire for transparency. “It is now used by some as a means of communication, that’s the game, it’s normal. But for me, it’s simply a communication blunder and we realized that it was stupid. “The director of the Sud-Gironde hospital also assures that an additional fixed-term contract was recruited in July, and three in August, to cope with “the high temperatures”, and that, budgetarily, the establishment “could cope”. “We have a staff ratio of 0.6, 0.8 full-time equivalents per bed. We are a little above average, so things are going rather well for us.”

The Regional Health Agency (ARS), which finances the “health” envelope of EHPADs, seems to have taken very little pleasure in being thus associated with an announcement of a potential reduction in the minimum care due to dependent elderly people. According to our information, at the end of July, it even reminded the hospital management by letter, arguing that under no circumstances could the budget deficit of an establishment justify poorer care for residents . Questioned about these exchanges, the ARS confirmed that it had ordered the establishment “to immediately put an end to these reductive, unequal measures that disrespect the dignity of people and to take the necessary corrective measures”. On the state of care within the EHPAD itself, the ARS points out that no reports were noted between 2013 and 2015. For 2016, a “complaint was filed in June alleging negligence”.