UPDATE: Part two of the four-day series is online this morning and it takes a look the Emeritus track record of ignoring health care requirements while focusing on filling more beds.
A sample: “For assisted living chains such as Emeritus, there is a powerful
business incentive to boost occupancy rates and to take in sicker
residents, who can be charged more.”

Pro Publica, one of the top journalism sites on the web,
today launched a four-part series that scrutinizes the booming, “haphazardly
regulated” assisted living industry.

Part one of this expose looks at California-based
Emeritus, a rapidly expanding company that reached the level of 200 assisted
living facilities in 35 states by 2006. According to ProPublica, the
corporation’s strategy included buying up smaller chains, many of them distressed
and financially troubled, with plans to turn them around.

The Emeritus properties are nicely
decorated and modern, according to the story, but at one California facility, Emerald Hills, the company’s
own internal documents show that an audit of the memory care unit for residents with Alzheimer’s
or other forms of dementia was “found wanting in almost every important regard.
In truth, (the) ‘specially trained’ staffers hadn’t actually been trained” to
provide health care for those in need — a violation of California law.

Here’s a portion of the report,
which was a collaboration between ProPublica and PBS:

“The facility relied on a single
nurse to track the health of its scores of residents, and the few licensed
medical professionals who worked there tended not to last long. During the
three years prior to (September 2008), Emerald Hills had cycled through three
nurses and was now employing its fourth. At least one of those nurses was
alarmed by what she saw, telling top Emeritus executives — in writing — that
Emerald Hills suffered from ‘a huge shortage of staff’ and was mired in ‘total
dysfunction.’

“During some stretches, the facility
went months without a full-time nurse on the payroll.

“The paucity of workers led to
neglect, according to a nurse who oversaw the facility before resigning in
disgust. Calls for help went unanswered. Residents suffering from incontinence
were left soaking in their own urine. One woman, addled by dementia, was
allowed to urinate in the same spot in the hallway of the memory care wing over
and over and over.”

At other Emeritus facilities in
California, ProPublica reports, state inspectors for years had cited them for
lack of staff and lack of adequate training, as well as for other basic
shortcomings.