My father died in a Kansas nursing home. I’ll never know what really happened to him | Opinion

“No one gets out of life alive.”

That’s certainly not what I expected to hear from the hospice nurse upon hearing that a doctor who treated my father suspected foul play in his death. That news fell on deaf ears as she assumed I was in denial, unable to accept his mortality.

Comments varied depending on what people had been told. The expectation that death was a near certainty for him based on his address was reflected in one person’s reply: ”But wasn’t your father in a nursing home?”

And there it is: “nursing home” — the two words that provide a loophole that lets Kansas enforcement agencies off the hook, excused from being required to launch an investigation.

What killed my father? To this day, I still don’t have answers. No autopsy was done and no investigation launched despite my countless pleas.

If there ever were a reason for a probe, my father’s death checked all the boxes. He was doing so well in the Topeka nursing home he’d been placed in for a temporary stay that his doctor recommended he return home.

But that didn’t happen. He suffered a sudden, catastrophic downward spiral that could not be attributed to his existing medical issues. The emergency room physician suspected foul play.

During a prior hospitalization, it was proven that a frequent visitor used medicine to manufacture symptoms that made his condition appear dire. His death certificate did not meet the legal requirements. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Although I have been visiting nursing homes for more than 30 years as a therapy dog volunteer, it was the harrowing ordeal with my father that gave me a front-row seat to the weaknesses in the elder care system.

Here’s some eye-openers for you:

▪ Kansas’ protective and enforcement agencies have no protocol requiring death investigations for all those who perish in nursing homes. Though the Kansas Department of Corrections has a protocol for compulsory death investigations for all those dying under their charge, the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services does not. (The department says the homes it licenses are responsible for the policy and procedure, daily operations of facilities and direct care of residents.)

▪ There are no requirements that nursing homes have on-site security, and no stipulations that all visitors be screened and their activities tracked.

▪ Many afflictions are mistaken for Alzheimer’s disease, but there is seldom scrutiny of terminal diagnoses to discover medical mistakes, or to determine whether drugs were given or withheld to produce symptoms that corrupted the diagnostic process. Commonly owned, easily concealed items such as insulin and eye drops can be used to disable or kill.

▪ There are no consequences when legal requirements for death certificates aren’t followed.

▪ In some states, a doctor can sign a death certificate without seeing the body. During a two-year review of fatalities marked “natural” on county death certificates, Seattle’s chief medical examiner for King County caught 347 serious misdiagnoses. Two were actually murders and two were suicides. More than 100 were accidental deaths attributed to falls or choking.

The idea of abuse and manslaughter in the sequestered communities of nursing homes is such a dark subject that many prefer to keep their heads in the sand than address the problem.

Let’s just say it like it is: Refusal to implement a protocol for mandatory death investigations based on a victim’s age and address can only be defined as blatant discrimination.

Law enforcement officers don’t stop short of investigating after being called to the scene of a death — in most locations, that is. But that is what happens in care facilities when mandated reporters won’t do their jobs when intimidated by durable power of attorney abuse and privacy laws.

It’s unthinkable that anyone who knows about this lack of protective and investigative measures and has the ability to correct it would be willing to let it continue.

Now you know. So just what is it going to take to remedy this unconscionable failure toward a vulnerable population in a setting where many of us are headed?