WHAT STARTED AS A DISPUTE over a fired union organizer has
turned into a fight over quality of care at Portland’s largest nursing
home, Laurelhurst Village on SE Stark.
Laurelhurst Village landed in the crosshairs of the Service
Employees International Union, Local 503 (SEIU) last month after
management fired employee Elizabeth Lehr just days after she became a
union organizer at the facility [“Nursing a Grudge,” News, May 7]. Lehr
filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board and is asking
for her job back. But in the meantime, union recruitment at the home
has frozen and the fight between union and nursing home management has
heated up.
When the union went digging through the nursing home’s history, they
found some alarming violations. At a community forum held on Tuesday,
May 19, the union handed out a flyer listing Laurelhurst Village’s
health violations, discovered by federal government inspectors. The
Southeast nursing home is among the 20 percent of Portland nursing
homes currently rated at one star out of five for health inspections on
the federal Medicare website,
medicare.gov—the lowest rating
possible.
A 2007 violation described a patient who suffered “a lot of pain and
discomfort” after being unable to urinate for hours when a nurse forgot
to insert a catheter. Another, from April 2008, says the nursing home
skipped giving a patient a prescribed laxative. A physician reported
that “massive amounts of stool had been removed [from the resident]”
and that the patient was “vomiting stool.”
“Overworked nurses cannot provide quality care,” said Laurelhurst
nursing assistant and union organizing committee member Andrea Glaser.
In response to the union’s flyer listing the horrific health
violations, nursing home management distributed three flyers of their
own headlined “The Truth” to nursing home employees late last week.
“The union that’s trying to organize you passed out a flyer
criticizing the quality of care that you, our valued employees,
provide. Many of the things said by this union are simply wrong,” the
first flyer reads, going on to say that Laurelhurst Village’s health
inspection rating is two stars, not one. But as of this week, the
government website shows that Laurelhurst Village’s health inspection
rating is currently one star.
On Friday, May 22, Laurelhurst Village looked clean and orderly as
Director of Operations Hannah Austin showed off the nursing home’s
handsome new wing.
“Our campaign is not, ‘Join a union, don’t join a union.’ Our
campaign is information,” Austin says. While acknowledging the
facility’s past health violations, Austin says Laurelhurst Village came
away with zero violations from its most recent inspection in February,
although the government has yet to release that inspection data on the
Medicare website.
Austin also defended the nursing home’s health record, saying that
the nine violations from its November 2008 inspection must be viewed in
the context of Laurelhurst being the largest nursing home in Portland,
with 203 beds, according to Austin.
Portland’s second largest nursing home, West Hills Health and
Rehabilitation had only one violation for its 180 residents in
September 2008 and Marquis Care at Mount Tabor had five health
violations for its 175 residents in February 2009, according to the
Medicare website. Indeed, despite Laurelhurst’s troubling record, it
does not currently have the most health violations in
Portland—that dubious honor goes to Glisan Care Center on NE 97th
and Glisan, which scored 15 violations in February 2009.
“That tells you right there that there’s a problem with the way
nursing homes are staffed in Oregon,” responds Sara Routt of the SEIU,
pointing out that Laurelhurst is symptomatic of a broader statewide
problem. According to Austin, Laurelhurst Village meets the state’s
seven patients per nurse legal minimum, but nurse and patient advocates
say the minimums are still too high to keep residents safe.
“Just meeting the minimum does not always provide adequately for
patients’ needs,” says Bob Joondeph, director of Disability Rights
Oregon.
At the community forum, a former Laurelhurst resident also spoke to
the audience via video. “The nurses tried so hard and they never got
any help from the management,” recalled Donna Fitzgerald, a
white-haired elderly woman who started to cry during the emotional
video. “It’s hard to be sick and watch people work so hard for so
little.”
The fact is, these places run the minimum they can afford legally. A union would come in and help in this regard. Very important given it is our grandma and grandpa sitting in these places. I worked for a few years in nursing homes – never again. Too many patients to care for, not enough time, very little money, management problems are rampant…etc etc
An interesting note left out of this article, is that Laurelhurst Village actually has 4 OUT OF 5 STARS on the Medicare.gov website rating of Nursing Home Staffing. Since you put so much weight into the rating given on this website, clearly this is an excellently staffed building.
A huge misperception in Nurse staffing ratios is that they count any licensed staff on the property. Less then half do direct patient care. That is why you see things like catheters not being put in and missed medications. In reality you will have like a med nurse for 20-40 patients and a charge nurse for the same amount. But they count the Care manage, assistant Director, the wound nurse and infection control nurse ect. for the ratio. All having little contact with the resident.
i just finished my intern hours for nurisng school at laurelhurst and i don’t feel this is accurate at least from my accounts there. I worked in both buildings and i can say laurelhurst is one of the cleanest facilities i’ve been at. After working agency as a CNA i can say i’ve seen WAY bad places and laurelhurst is actually one of the better facilities i have seen. EVERY place like laurelhurst has problems– almost all of the residents there are well taken care of. Any place like this is going to have complaints. If you want the best care for your loved ones then take them home and care for them yourself and don’t complain about one of the better facilities in the area- all are staffed pretty much the same– the ones being the best are the non-profit homes– if you don’t have choice do your homework on the place before send your loved ones there. like i said every place has problems and compared to what i have seen elsewhere laurelhurst is pretty darn good.
Laurelhurst village is a really nice looking place to send a loved one, but with all the employees being overworked makes Laurelhurst Village a bad place! Our family sent a relative there to the health and rehabilitation center and 2 nights ago was a very bad experience for our relative. She had to go to the bathroom and so she pressed her call light. She waited a while and really couldn’t hold it anymore (also cannot tranfer independently at this time) so she had no choice but to go in her bed. After about a half an hour (and her calling 911 to try for some help) a registered nurse came in and said to her “We don’t have time to be changing linens all night”. This is neglet and is unacceptable. I heard that Marquis Mt. Tabor is an excellent place to place loved ones 🙂 Just please, don’t send your loved ones here unless you plan on being there 24/7 and providing care because obviously these employees are not capable of doing their job.