EP2: Defending the Frontline: Beyond the Newsday Headlines

"Newsday just dropped a report on $500,000 in fines and 18 major citations in Long Island nursing homes. The headlines are screaming 'abuse' and 'neglect.' But we know that 18 citations don’t represent the thousands of healthcare heroes working double shifts tonight in Nassau and Suffolk.The industry is under fire, and silence is an admission of guilt. 
I am looking for NYS Long Term Care administrators, nurses, and advocates to join me LIVE at 7:30 PM. Don't let a single news story define your life’s work. Come on the show, defend our industry, and tell the side of the story Newsday didn’t print. Comment 'GUEST' below to get the link."

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey everyone, how are you, Charlie Day? Day to day senior care. Thank you for uh joining me at 7 30. I'm a little late here, a couple minutes, but uh I'm on. Um yeah, we this this was a very big thing going on. Um this article, I read it yesterday, um, and it was uh very surprising. I was at a client's house actually, and he has news day because I don't have newsday paper delivered to me anymore. But uh I looked at it, I read it, I was like, oh my gosh, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. And then today I'm online and hold on one second, these lights, I'm online, and I'm seeing in all these, you know, like elder care groups and other people's just I mean, people are talking about it, how uh they their loved ones were uh subjected to this, you know, different um things of allegations of uh abuse, neglect, assault, um, just poor care. So um I get it, I get it, but I I put a call to action earlier today. So if anyone is there, I just want to speak with other uh industry leaders, anyone that wants to chime in, um, I can send you a restream link um to our studio here, and we can just discuss this. Um, you can share your uh input, your thoughts. Um otherwise, what I will do is I will do a brief explanation of this whole thing, folks. Um I am going to open up there's a chat. If you are watching on YouTube channel, you could show me a comment. You can you know type in a comment on Facebook Live, you can uh type in a comment, and on um LinkedIn, you can certainly type in a comment. I'm gonna give you um a hello right now. Okay, and if you see that, that means you're able to uh chime in with us uh on the chat as well. You don't have to necessarily come online. Um, if you do, I just hit the invite guest, I send you the link and you come on in. All right, everyone. Again, this is the uh care with confidence, but this is a special tonight. I just have to uh share uh what happened. So for those viewers that are not going to come online, they're not industry leaders or they're not nursing assistants, but they're still very curious about all this. This is why I'm here. Now, again, I'm off script, um, you know, unshaven. Um, but it's important that I jump on and talk about that. And you know what? That's the type of person I am. I don't have to be cookie cutter like everybody else. I just get on and tell it like it is, folks. And I'm here to do some discussions. I got my coffee ready. Um, anyone wants to join in?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

I'll be here for at least a half hour. All right.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I'm gonna wait a second or two for some um anyone that wants to invite themselves in. I'm checking um different spots too, just uh different venues, so I can see if anyone is um commenting and yet I can't see it on here because I'm still learning. Oh, there's my sister. Hey, good to see you again. Okay, and you're from you're on YouTube channel, perfect. So let me uh type you back.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Thank you, sis. Okay. Let me get uh Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, so I'm gonna go over some of this right now. Let me close this out. I'm gonna put this, just give me a second I have to get in here.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

One second. There's Facebook. Okay. Oh, perfect, okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Okay, yeah, so let me just go over this real quick. Um give you the whole rundown here.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

So what we're getting here is this newsday article had information um$511,000 and 92 cents in fines. These numbers are real, okay, and they are unacceptable. But do they tell the whole story of New York State long-term care? Or are they being used to paint a target on the back of every facility in the state? Um, if you are in the industry, like I had said earlier, I am opening the restream guest slots now. Get in here and speak your truth. All right, that's I have a little bit of a script here tonight because um I don't want to get lost in all this. I don't want to do this by myself, but I know there's other people out there. I'm gonna check on LinkedIn and see if anyone commented in there. I could send them the link. Give me one second. Let me shoot over to LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

All right. Okay, yep, and I see we're live there.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

It's happening now. I'm gonna comment in there and see if it shoots over here. Um please join us. We are live now. If you are an industry leader, or a nurse's aide, or a social worker, let's hear your thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Leave a comment and come on in. Be a guest. Okay, shot that out.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

All right, so okay, so what we need to know too is a lot when I looked at the article, there were like 18 citations that were that were posted. Now, I'm I'm a I'm still an active licensed nursing home administrator. Okay, so um I have a lot of concern with you know all the citations that they posted, yet I get it. I am I'm not defending allegations of um abuse or neglect or any of those that were warranted in this citation. If you know, if that's what was caught on camera, if that's what was uh you know, was uh submitted to the Department of Health, um, when you have to make that phone call in an incident report and let them know what happened in your facility. I've been there. I've I've been there and we've had we've had in our own my own facilities, there were taught many times we'd have to call the state for various uh complaints of abuse, whether they were legit or not. Okay. So the thing that worries me, everyone, the thing that worries me is that when an article like this gets thrown out there with just the facts, and you don't have that opportunity to um for rebuttal, a lot of times this is another way seniors and families look at this and say, you know what? I am putting my loved one in any nursing home. This is crazy. Look at all these nursing homes that get these citations. Yes, but the one that had a high water temperature, um, it's again, you know, it's it could be immediate jeopardy, uh isolated incident. All depends on on how much water is it, is it through the system? Is it every you know, uh faucet in the building? Um, there's a lot of factors involved, but again, it's still not allowed. But accidents happen just like in your home, in a residential home. You may, you know, something may happen to your heat pump and you go to put your hand and it gets too hot one time. So that's different, folks. That's different than um, you know, saying that uh, you know, um somebody abused somebody or all the other bigger citations that are in there, which again I get, but again, you we're when we're how many, and we need to break it down and look at each one. That's how we would do it. And you know, like if it's if the grand pavilion, like in the picture on Newsday had a picture like this, they showed the Grand Pavilion, Holy Patterson, St. Johnlin, Water's Edge in Port Jeff, San Simeon on the Sound by the Sound, and and others. But, you know, what what was the incident? What was the citation? You know, we got to look at that. And you know, being a professional in the business, and obviously everyone knows I, you know, I'm the owner founder of day-to-day senior care. Um, my expert consultations, when I take uh clients, families out for tours or even a phone call where they're deciding between a facility or another facility. Yeah, I'll do my research, I'll go in, I'll look at the DOH, all that, their citations, the surveys, as far back as I can get them. And, you know, and what what their current uh rating is. I mean, you you have facilities with five-star ratings, and all of a sudden there's an alleged abuse, and now they're given a really bad name because people don't know all the facts. Now you can go in, you can look at it, you can read the correction, plan of correction, the you know, the reason for the citation, um, and you can make your own educated guess. I'm not arguing any like that, but to say that you'll never go in, you'll never have your mother or father in in a in a nursing home, again, you know, you we have thousands and thousands of of caregivers and and support staff and administration that spend every single day making sure their facility is safe.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Every single day.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

And that's why I'm here tonight. I'm not defending the citations, I'm not defending someone who, you know, assaulted somebody, someone that, you know, that uh, you know, did something that, you know, alleged it to be at this point. But again, we have to look at isolated incidents. All right, a perfect example. Um, you know, one of them cited uh an incident that uh had to do with um uh I'm trying to remember now. There was a few of them. Yeah, the one with the uh the issue with the respiratory, I don't know which facility it was, but there was an issue where a resident was saying she was having trouble breathing and they didn't follow up fast enough, they didn't make the right decisions, and um, you know, it it she needed respiratory treatment. And then there's others that um, you know, someone actually uh touched another resident, and then another resident complained about the same employee. Okay, you know, look, even with criminal background checks, you know, the federal government and the state, New York State have all the oversight of these facilities. And they have their policies and they have their procedures that need to be followed by the New York State of, you know, the owners and operators, then the New York State licensed administrator, the one that they deemed um suitable to go into a nursing home and be the eyes and ears and the policy uh maker and the policy um executioner. Um they that's what uh that's why they license us nursing home administrators for that such reason. Have I batted heads with um ownership? Absolutely. Environmental issues, absolutely, other issues, absolutely. Um food costs, yeah. I've argued out trying to increase food costs to increase better food, you know, and then of course, you know, well, you also have to consider their financial um uh capabilities too, and and you know, more more staff, I mean more, more, more uh residents that are in the facility, they can increase the um the uh amount to to prov to get better foods, um, you know, all these things. I don't want to get you know off off a key here, but what I'm trying to get at is that we do our best every day when we walk into that building to make sure that every single resident is protected, but you're always gonna get those outliners, you're always gonna get those one one out every decade that's gonna be in your facility and is gonna potentially hurt somebody, physically abuse or sexual abuse. It's just not a perfect world. And with you know, with all the regulations, all the oversight, all the fingerprinting, and everything that's got to be done in HR, you you you could have a perfect person that's never done anything, and then all of a sudden he's been in the facility for 10-15 years, and something something happened in his head where he thought it was okay to prey on elderly. It's ridiculous, but it happens. Okay, so this call to action today. Let me see if any because I'm talking away here and see if anyone uh invite Okay No, not yet.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Let me just check on YouTube channel real quick.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Okay. Let's get in there back in, look live. Okay. There we go. All right, perfect.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

So oh boy, I just realized something too. I'm rushing, I didn't even have my headphones on. Rushing to get in here. Okay, can you hear me? I'm sure it's I have everything on here. Yep. Okay. All right, so where are we at?

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Okay, guys. Okay, it looks like uh we got bumped off for a second. Okay. I'll check. All right. What's this? Are you there again? We got bumped off. It happens. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

So we, you know, and we gotta also think about how how these stories hurt morale for the staff who do care, you know? All of a sudden, you know, they're you know, they're getting the Department of Health is showing up in their building, okay? And it's you know, it's incredible that they have to go through this for one person that did something after they've they've had, you know, a hundred percent uh you know positive rating on their um surveys. Um, you know, it it's it's it's sad. And I I I do feel bad. I really do. Um, and that's why I got so uh I got I was I was angry at first, then I, you know, not angry at first, I was surprised at first to see all that come at come at me for 2025. So they were really out there um doing their thing, which again, look, I'm I'm totally in agreement. When the Department of Health comes in and they do their inspections, they should do a thorough, concise inspection, okay, because they're gonna come after me if my license is on the building. You think they're gonna I actually I'm not gonna share where, but you know, I I had a letter sent to me saying you, Mr. Day, okay, you Mr. Day uh are found not to be guilty of uh you know of a citation, you know, an incident that occurred that could have, you know, led to something more serious. But they checked me as well, just like they do all the other staff. And if I would have been a part of that, like say I I I for you know, I intentionally didn't, you know, call it into the Department of Health, you know, I'd lose my license, like that. Okay. And if I didn't lose my license, I get a ding on it, and it would go with me as I carry on into my sixth, seventh, and eighth year being active. I'd like to get to 10 years and have a you know a clean record. Now I'm not in the nursing home buildings, but I'm out here in home care. And once my once I do a medical um agency, you know, where we're gonna be home care medical, and I get awarded an operator's license, then you know, if I get in trouble with that, it's also gonna affect my active nursing home license. So they're very strict. We do our job, we work hard. Um, and I remember as the administrator, I always had to keep my eyes on everything, my fingers on the pulse of the building. Okay. Um, all right, let's see. What is this? Anyone invites? I don't see anybody waiting. Nobody's waiting. Okay, nobody coming in yet, huh? All right. That's okay. I can run this another night, too. I could do tomorrow night at 7:30. For those that didn't get a chance to come on. Certainly, I would love to hear from anyone that wants to share about this because, you know, again, our viewers, um, as we're growing on YouTube channel, um, I want them to get the latest information out there um in the home care long-term industry, long-term care industry, our clients, our clients' families. When I tell my clients' families, yeah, take a look at our stuff on YouTube channel, you know, or or or you know, oh, you want, you know, they want to they want to know where my Facebook uh page is for business. I give them that and I give them my uh my personal Facebook page as well, because I'm posting on both. I'm not afraid to hide anything, but um it's very important for our listeners and our viewers because we have a podcast uh audio as well on iHeartRadio and other uh radios. Um and I heard Google, not Google, um Apple. Apple when I signed on and got the RSS feed for our uh podcast series, we run three, um, and they go to Apple. Now Apple has uh video uh podcasting or joining in with that. So now people can also do video, uh, they can watch a video as opposed to um listening to it in audio. But you know, when you're driving, I like to you know listen to audio podcasts myself. So okay. All right, let's get back into this, folks. All right, we've got 21 minutes. I usually try to keep things to 30 minutes because I don't want to bore people, but I do appreciate all the viewers that are on uh watching right now. Okay, let's just, you know, look, we'll get into it again a little bit more here. I've got some more information that just came out. I feel like a news reporter. More information just showed up. All right. Anyway, here we go. Okay, so here's a breakdown of uh some of the specific findings and incidents that were cited in the reporting that you. can use to frame okay that we could use to frame in our defense okay but let me let me let me uh okay you should be prepared let's see physical and sexual abuse now in the report it mentions multiple allegations of physical sexual abuse against residents one of the most cited facilities the Medford Multicare Center for Living was reported penalized for failing to properly investigate or report allegations of sexual misconduct by staff now that's an issue folks okay that that is an issue if you're if you're not properly preparing reports of this you're gonna get you're gonna get in just as much trouble as if you did didn't you know report it at all you see what I'm getting at and that's the difference here most families are just like okay oh wow they didn't you know it maybe they didn't fail to report failing to properly investigate so in other words because I'm I work behind the scenes folks I've been in a lot of surveys they're going around they're asking all the questions to all the staff they're they're uh asking the um the residents the ones that were uh that were involved you may know you may not know in the beginning of this of this uh investigation by the state because they don't sometimes reveal the names of who they are yet um so they're going through all that and um trying to find out the information and then they come to a conclusion after their investigation that the nurse supervisor didn't tell the nurse director what was proper what properly happened so the nurse director instead of doing her investigation further puts it in the report calls the state up and now they're looking at the whole all those moving parts and how they didn't do it properly okay I'm just putting it out there folks doesn't mean I agree with it okay as the administrator if I was in this facility and this happened I would be in doing I would be wanting to know how this got failed properly because the administrator is the one that signs off at the very beginning. Once he sees the report he says okay let's go let's report this okay let's put it into the state you I usually would get a call from the nursing director right away okay about the incident and then I'm on my way in that's how it worked I would be through I would be involved in the whole steps everything and I'd be sharing with the owners as well because again my license the owners we got to make and even the nursing directors have their licenses gross neglect another one that was cited incidents including incidents included a resident at a Brentwood facility found drinking hair dye a resident with dementia missing for over 20 hours in Hempstead and a suicidal patient jumping from second story window in Huntington all right that's pretty serious folks I don't recall reading that one the resident died after staff the one with um all right so I don't know if Newsday had complete report oh okay there was another the story there's a news story that uh there's still okay so this information is even more updated okay uh mistakenly believing the residents had did not okay so here's Central Island healthcare where residents died after staff failed to um perform CPR mistakenly believing the residents had a do not resuscitate orders I do remember that one I do remember that one okay so the total fines were 511092 dollars with 18 citations um but again these these these um these incidents you know brentwood facility found drinking hair dye poor resident on that what was where'd the hair dye come from a um she must have gotten it in the we have hair saloons you know salons in in and nursing homes so maybe it somehow the door was unlocked you see what I mean that's what I'm trying to say if if no one you know purposely put it in front of her but she could have she could have grabbed the hold of it one day coming back from a haircut you don't know these things but you need to do all right so we we got lost we're back here guys sorry about that sometimes these live streamings will uh fade out but we were going over uh some of the uh reports um so while new york state fines are capped at 1000 per violation um the bulk of the half million dollar figure comes from federal penalties which are much more aggressive yes yeah if you if you have the federal government coming in your building oh boy did i ever work in a facility where the federal government showed up yep and it it's you know it's it's it's it's like walking on eggshells folks but again the staff the majority of the staff the administration the uh the caregivers the housekeepers everyone is doing a great job to keep residents safe and watching out but again life happens and I'm not again you know look families are gonna be like I don't and look I had my mother in a nursing home obviously you know she was in my nursing home as administrator but and I worried about her every day too and I always came to check on her one thing I always tell my clients excuse me not only are we going to be doing weekly and and monthly checks depending on you know what type of program the clients want but the clients still need to you know if they can to make visits regularly too you know visits consistently to the nursing homes you know helps you be a part of everything if you notice something wrong if you walked in the room and found some hair dye that a housekeeper didn't catch on the first or second run which I don't know how that can happen but it does maybe you know these are ways to avoid my plan of correction mindset uh through these three decades um working in assisted living and in nursing homes I'm thinking I'm constantly thinking what else what else is there what else is at the root of of these allegations and these citations and findings and and putting a plan of correction together. So the industry defense points um so there are over 600 nursing homes in New York State folks dozens on Long Island 18 citations while serious represent a tiny fraction of the total patient days provided last year okay and New York law um has changed with that you know I mean they still have the 3.5 hours of direct care per resident day many facilities are struggling to hit this not because they don't want to but because there is a massive labor shortage overreach there are there citations for actual clinical failure or are they administrative lapses that the media is sensationalizing? Hello um the funding gap remind your audience that many of these facilities like NUMC operate with a massive percentage of Medicaid Medicare um hold on here I'm getting true of my mic Medicare uh reimbursement patients okay and often don't cover the actual cost of of high level care okay so let me we're gonna run it we're gonna run it out here so I'm just gonna ask a quick question if anyone wants to chime in on a comment okay I see my sister's still there okay so um the Newsday report highlights 18 citations in your facility how many thousands of successful safe interactions happen for every one mistake okay and then I'll leave you with one other question how do we as an industry fix the bad Apple image that stories like this create for the thousands of dedicated nurses who are working right now and then when we come back on tomorrow I'll I'll do another one tomorrow at 730 so if anyone's listening we will come back on tomorrow at 730 p.m okay and I have another question you could answer the next time when you come in when the media screams abuse they often overlook the staffing crisis how has the labor shortage in Nassau and Suffolk impacted your ability to meet these state mandates okay our listeners want to know and I would prefer hearing from other people in the industry um than myself so we would love to have you on as a guest okay all right everyone that's it for tonight thank you all and um yeah let's get back together tomorrow night at 7 30 thank you all bye bye