- From Nursing Home Tragedy to Nursing Home Resident Advocate Phyllis Ayman, MS/SLP, CDP, CADDCT, CDCM, CMDCP 1:10:05
The story that led Martha Deaver to become an advocate for nursing home residents is, like many others, rooted in a terrible experience with 2 nursing homes in Little Rock Arkansas where her mother and mother-in=law were residents. The story is both tragic but, unfortunately, all too familiar.
She ultimately shared the horrific story with a journalist who published it in
Ladies Home Journal. She went on to supply detailed information and data to the director of an organization that provides information on health care issues to Consumer Reports. This resulted in Consumer Reports publishing one of the most in-depth looks at America’s nursing homes to date entitled: The Crisis in America’s Nursing Homes.
Mrs. Deaver talks about what she knows about the failure of the nursing home industry, nursing home tragedies and ills that have been known by Federal Government agencies for decades. As a matter of fact, she has been an adviser to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Office of Inspector General (OIG). She explains how after her extensive investigative work with nursing home complaints, at her insistence they were added to the website of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services so that people seeking information about nursing homes would be able to see beyond the annual nursing home oversight survey to find more information about complaints lodged against them.
In 2013 she worked with Jeff Lowenstein with the Centers for Public Integrity on a 2 year project where data from every nursing home in the country became the basis of the largest in-depth investigation into the importance of adequate staffing in our nations nursing homes.
She’s been recognized by the Governor of Arkansas, who said,, “She is an advocate in the best sense of the word, tirelessly supporting and defending others.” and was honored by RBI director Robert Mueller III, with the 2010 FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award for the state of Arkansas. Mrs. Deaver’s passion is palpable. You can hear it as she speaks about the unspeakable tragedies experienced by U.S. Nursing Home Residents.
Mrs. Deaver is not only seeking to find out and call out the negative, but seeks to find the positive in the health care workers that provide the direct care to resident. She created the AANHR’s first national Nursing Assistant Recognition Award to recognize nursing assistants from across the state of Arkansas. She also developed the first program acknowledging National Residents Rights Week and has chaired both events for the past five years.
Today, Mrs. Deaver is the president of the Arkansas Advocates for Nursing Home Residents (AANHR), an organization dedicated to protecting residents in nursing homes from abuse and seeking prosecution for those who victimize nursing home residents.
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