October 22, 2007

By Corrine Falline

At a few minutes after noon today, our bus pulled up in front of Carlyle headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC. The article on the front page of today’s Washington Post business section had us fired up and ready to go.

According to the Post, Carlyle sent a "patients first pledge” to state regulators across the country today saying that they’ll continue to provide “quality” services for patients and “proper” education and training for staff.

For five days now, our caravan has been traveling from state to state to talk about the pending buyout. I work in a Manor Care facility. Yet apparently Carlyle didn’t think of me as enough of a stakeholder in the deal to bother informing me of the pledge. They took it to state regulators first, and the media second.

I read about it first in the Washington Post. And now I can’t help but question their sincerity.

If Carlyle really were concerned about putting patient care first, wouldn’t patients, caregivers, advocates, and community leaders have been somewhere on that short list of privileged pledge recipients?

If they really were concerned about patients first, would they have ignored our call for specific commitments to improve care and responded instead with words as pliable—and potentially meaningless—as “quality” and “proper”? 

If they really were concerned, wouldn’t they have come out and told us so today when we visited their offices, instead of watching from behind closed glass doors while metro police babysat us for an hour on their front steps?

Carlyle, we will not be fooled—and we certainly will not be silenced—by vague pledges in a press release. Maybe your investors will, maybe Manor Care shareholders will, but we will not.

Our requests are basic:
• Ensure that nursing homes are in compliance with federal minimum resident care regulations;
• Ensure that homes are staffed at levels recommended by independent experts as improving quality of care;
• Disclose the impact of the buyout to residents, workers and taxpayers;
• Structure the buyout so that Manor Care staff has a role in the reorganization; and
• Create a Quality Care Fund and a new advisory committee comprised of Manor Care staff, resident advocacy groups and other stakeholders to improve patient care in all Manor Care homes.

Our patients—soon to be your patients, too—deserve these minimum commitments, don’t you think?

Let us know what you decide. We’ll be outside…waiting.

Corrine Falline works as a dietary aide at the HCR Manor Care Dulaney Towson Nursing Center in Towson, Maryland. She is a member of SEIU 1199 UHE.

October 20, 2007

By Robin Bawkey

One Sunday, 19 years ago, I met a woman at my church. She was completely blind, her kidneys were failing, and she didn’t have anyone to help her with her day-to-day life tasks. I wasn’t working at the time, and so, despite the fact that I had no experience in the field, I decided I could be the one to help her.

For 19 years now, I’ve been a home care worker in Michigan.

I’ve been with my current client, Scott, for 7 years now. Scott is the brother of another woman from my church. I help him out with transportation and light housekeeping. I do what I do so that Scott and the other clients I’ve served can continue to live an independent life. I give them the best quality care I can.

I got into—stumbled into, you might say—home care work because all my life I’ve believed that if you see a person in need, and you have the resources to help her, you have both the privilege and the responsibility to do so.

I’m on this caravan because I’m really bothered by what I’ve learned about what can happen when private equity firms buy out nursing homes. I’ve read about deals where firms pay hundreds of millions to take over a struggling chain, and then “improve the efficiency” of homes by raising costs and cutting staff and resources.

It bothers me that these dealmakers—who are in positions of such power and influence—would choose to use that power to fatten their own paychecks at the expense of patient care. It’s not right, and if the Carlyle Group is going to buy out Manor Care nursing homes, there needs to be a public conversation about it.

With privilege comes responsibility, and with responsibility, accountability to the patients, families, and communities that will be affected.
 
Robin Bawkey is a home care worker in Kalamazoo, MI. She is a member of SEIU Healthcare Michigan.

October 19, 2007

By Stanley Dorsey

We need better supplies, not cheaper. We need more staff, not less.

I’ve worked as a floor tech at a Manor Care home in Maryland for five years now. My job is to strip and wax the floors. I wish I could tell you that’s all I do.

It’s not.

I work on the environmental services team. Our job is to keep the place clean. And in a place with so many sick people, and so many people with weakened immune systems, our work is essential to keeping people healthy.

The problem is, on a lot of days—even though I work hard from 7 a.m. straight through to 3 p.m.—I don’t have what I need to do my job right. Our cleaning supplies run out, and we’re left empty-handed until the next shipment arrives. There simply aren’t enough of us there every day to get everything done up to par, so we have to pick and choose what’s going to get cleaned, and what can wait ‘til tomorrow.

I mentioned before that cleaning isn’t all I do. Some days I’m running patients back and forth from dialysis. Sure it’s not in my job description, but when a patient needs to get there, and there aren’t enough medical staff to help them, what do you do if you’re the cleaning guy? You help them out, of course.

I came on this caravan because I’m concerned about the quality of work I and my coworkers are able to provide. I know that when private equity firms bought out some other chains, they “improved” the budgets by cutting staff and resources. I’m here to ask the Carlyle Group not to let that happen at Manor Care. A lot of money is going to exchange hands in this deal, and I just hope that some of it will go to helping us do our jobs better.

Stanley Dorsey is a member of SEIU 1199 UHE in Maryland.

October 18, 2007

By Courtney Bishop

When we showed up at Manor Care headquarters in Toledo yesterday, I was surprised by the high security at the building. Most of the entrances were locked up, and if you did want to enter, you had to walk through a metal detector, and then get a second screening with a hand-held metal detector. And you had to leave your cell phone outside.

I learned long ago that for some people, high security is a status symbol: you must be important if you have lots of men and machines standing between you and the guy on the street. So it didn’t occur to me until today, when we pulled up to the Manor Care facility in Lancaster, OH and were told we couldn’t enter the building, that the security isn’t just a status thing…it’s a fear thing.

We told them we wanted to talk to the workers and patients at the home. The administrators who came out to meet us in the parking lot said we couldn’t. This made me a little mad, because I came on this trip because I care about my patients and others like them, and I’m concerned about the quality of care they receive. I want to talk to my peers about how they’re doing, and how they’re being supported by management in their efforts to provide the best care possible for their patients. But today, I couldn’t. I just had to get back on the bus.

I’m a Certified Nurses’ Aide (CNA) at a home in Illinois. I’ve read up on private equity. I read the New York Times story about how the buyouts have affected patient care at other nursing home chains, and it scares me. Where I work, we often have 2 or 3 CNAs on a shift responsible for 50 or 60 patients. And I know that, compared to other places, my patients and I have got it good.

I have trouble imagining what work would be like if somebody decided to “trim the fat” from the budget and get rid of some of the RNs and CNAs, which has happened at a number of the homes bought out by private equity. Patient care would plummet. Dedicated workers would lose their jobs because their higher skill levels make them a financial liability.

One thing I know for sure is that if workers had a place at the table in these decisions, maintaining safe patient care standards would be non-negotiable. If the execs at the top who are (re-)writing the budgets shared this top priority with us, why are they locking us out? I don’t have a lot of money. I don’t have a bodyguard, or even a hand-held metal detector. So why are they acting so scared?

Courtney Bishop works as a Certified Nurse Aide (CNA) at Glenwood Care Center in Joliet, Illinois. He is a member of SEIU Local 4.