OWN UP

I agree wholeheartedly with Wanda Morris [“System Failure,” September, about the nursing home murders]. How could this happen? Maybe because the owners of these nursing homes care more about their profit margin (i.e., multiple homes, large salaries) than the lives of the actual people who are forced to live in these homes because they don’t have the money for something better, where personal care is actually at the forefront of the mandate of the nursing home. Maybe because, in spite of mandatory annual inspections, mandatory reporting of suspicious deaths, mandatory reporting of nurses who fail to do their jobs and actually cause harm to the patients in their care, this abuse continued because no one cared. When will the government and owners of these deplorable institutions stand up and accept their part in these awful crimes against the weakest people of our society? When will they accept responsibility and change the way things are done? —Jo Wilkinson, via email