D.C. Nonprofit Elderly Death Review Teams Could Reduce Foul Play

The D.C. organization Alliance for Strong Families and Communities wants to increase awareness of conducting investigations in unnatural elderly deaths that could have been prevented.

Elderly deaths are almost never reviewed and are presumed to be associated with the patient’s chronic condition or their age, but in rare cases deaths are caused on purpose and there’s not much awareness or knowledge of it.

Advocates for the death review investigations believe that seniors in nursing homes go through neglect and/or abuse too often and need more protection.

To begin, what is elder abuse? Elder abuse takes place when adults (usually over age 60) experience emotional, physical, sexual, or financial abuse by an individual or group of people that are supposed to protect their well-being and provide care for them. Elder neglect and abuse are unfortunately common and take place in live-in care facilities and nursing homes.

Urgent Need for Death Review Teams

Even police believe it is necessary. A former prosecutor, Paul Greenwood, believes that death review teams should be located and active in every urban region. He led one of the most prominent elder crime units in the entire country and saw firsthand the issues that can take place practically without anyone knowing.

If a child passes away, it’s customary for a group of professionals to gather in order to see if there was any way the fatality could have been avoided. However, in many states, there is not any type of review for helpless adult or elderly deaths, even if the scenario was suspicious.

Review teams would be helpful when figuring out if nursing home resident deaths could have been avoided or if other deaths could be avoided due to lessons learned from the incident. Since research has found that elder abuse leads to earlier death, there should be no reason not to implement these investigations.

Effectiveness and Lessons Learned

San Diego County has had a death review team for over 15 years and has learned many lessons. The team is comprised of police, prosecutors, health care professionals, a medical inspector, and adult protective services examiners. Often, if death is preventable, a prominent lesson learned from the investigation is that vital information was not given to the right authorities.

Failing systems in nursing homes are identified and are strategically examined for how to make improvements. Death review teams can also discover risk factors that contribute to unnatural fatalities, and there is the possibility of finding out the individual who purposefully caused the death.

Opposition to the Cost of Truth

Death review teams sound great in theory, but many oppose them because they are unsure about how they would be funded. However, the volunteer teams only require a subsidy for administrative and organizational expenses.

Nursing homes, medical care providers, and assisted living homes actively oppose the development of death review teams. There seem to be conflicted motives and many are pushing to prevent investigation. Yet, family members of the deceased often argue that digging deep is what’s needed for true justice.