Relatives of patients concerned about care
by Karen E. Crummy, Boston Herald, Thursday, January 25, 2001

What Barbara Grishaver remembers about Meadowbrook still haunts her.

She says she saw patients lying in their own waste, begging for someone to change them. Some cried because their unsteady hands and heads made it impossible to feed themselves.

Nobody came to help.

Some were bathed infrequently and some often suffered injuries from falling out of bed. When they were in pain, they pushed hand-held nursing alert buttons.

Too many times, nobody came to help.

"I'm haunted by the fact that maybe I didn't help her - help all of them - enough," said Grishaver, whose mother died of natural causes at the home a year and a half ago. "There is nothing worse than watching people who are sick and watching them not being treated right."

John Gould, spokesman at the Canton nursing home, said, "Those charges weren't true back then and they aren't true now. We absolutely deny these charges.

"We are in full compliance with state and federal government regulations. Meadowbrook has one of the highest percentages of people who come to the home and stay," he said.

Grishaver says her 90-year-old mother, Betty Bellin, was treated well by most staffers at Meadowbrook - and attributed some of the better care to her daily visits to the facility.

Yet, while things were better for Bellin, they were far from perfect.

Grishaver remembers her mother not being fed or being fed "food not fit for a human being" that came from a "disgustingly filthy and dirty kitchen."

There were times her mother repeatedly fell out of her wheelchair and bed, and ye no one thought to take safety precautions to ensure it didn't happen again, her daughter said.

Occasionally her mother couldn't get to the bathroom and no one was available to help her clean up.

Although Grishaver thought of bringing her mother to another home, Meadowbrook was the only one close enough for Grishaver to visit daily.

"But I still blame myself and wonder sometimes about things I might never have known," Grishaver said. "I have to live with that."

Jannie Bennet-Terry, a 63-year-old resident of Endicott Manor nursing home in Dedham, tells a similar story. Suffering from diabetes and recent hip-replacement surgery, Bennet-Terry has been at Endicott Manor for the last month.

When she is in pain or sick, she presses the alert button near her bed. "But they don't answer me," she said. "They come when they want to come."

Her daughter, Charlene Terry, visits her regularly on her way home from work. Charlene Terry also feels that the response time of the nursing home's staff is too slow, a fact she chalks up to understaffing.

"Sometimes someone will come in minutes and sometimes it will be hours," Charlene Terry said. "The (home) just doesn't have enough help for everyone."

In a written statement, officials at the nursing home said, "The facility management will continue working closely with staff to proactively identify resident care concerns and work in conjunction with families to continue providing open lines of communication.

"With our new management team firmly in place, we are confident Endicott Manor is providing quality care and striving to constantly improve its care and services to its residents."

Although the home wasn't cited for security breaches, Endicott Manor's security could be considered questionable. A Herald reporter was able to walk in and out of the home four times without being stopped, questioned or greeted.