Elder abuse in nursing homes is much more widespread than you would think. According to a study done by the National Center on Elder Abuse almost one in three U.S. nursing homes had serious violations that could have caused harm to a resident. In another study of 2,000 nursing home residents, 44% said they were abused and 95% said they were either neglected or had seen another resident neglected, and 50% of the staff admitted they had mistreated an older patient.
It appears that the situation is not going to get better anytime soon. And here’s why! Over the next decade it is estimated that nursing home residents will increase by almost 50%. When you factor in the fact that many patients now receive substandard care and are subjected to abuse by poorly trained and marginal employees, it is easy to see how this could happen.
In another study that we saw close to 60% of all nursing homes had at least one employee with a criminal record.
Many nursing home residents are unable to adequately verbalize what is happening to them because they are Alzheimer’s disease patients who suffer from dementia.
So families who decide that a loved one, for any number of reasons, should go into an assisted living facility or nursing home, need to find some way to protect them from this abuse.
Many of these families are turning to Hidden Cameras as the best way to detect elder abuse and as a bonus can detect theft of personal property, which is also a common problem in nursing homes, especially with patients of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
There has always been a question about the legality of having hidden cameras inside the patient’s room in a nursing home. As recently as one year ago, Oklahoma passed specific legislation that made it legal. Other states are following suit because, as a practical matter, a hidden camera may be the only way, not just the best way, to document and detect elder abuse as well as catch petty theft.
A hidden camera can be inside any common household product such as alarm clocks, wall clocks, clock radios and many other household devices. Most of them these days have a DVR that records images to an SD card-sort of an all-inclusive spy camera.
If you suspect wrongdoing, either in the way of elder abuse or of petty theft, in your loved one’s room in a nursing home, a hidden spy camera may be the answer to protect him or her.
We have 149 Spy Cameras for you to choose from to protect your loved ones from elder abuse.