Editorial: Nursing home cameras can provide protection, peace of mind
Putting a loved one in a nursing home is fraught with emotional questions:
Have I given up on mom? Is the end near? Am I a lousy, heartless child?
Will she be safe?
Horror stories abound about nursing homes - some founded, many hyperbole - as places where old people are neglected or mistreated in their final years or days.
We've reported on abuses at nursing homes on a number of occasions. And we've also experienced on a personal level some amazing, caring facilities and staffs that usher our loved ones to better health or a peaceful end.
Part of how we shape our opinions about nursing homes is not based on realistic expectations or knowledge of what appropriate care is but by our own psyches, our personal standards for how we'd treat that loved one if he or she were living with us. Our feelings of guilt can weigh heavily on the equation.
One of the greatest sources of angst for us - especially those of use who live far from the nursing home - is not having firsthand experience with how well our loved one is being treated. That's made worse when that loved one is incapable of expressing himself or herself anymore or is unaware of what's happening.
That anxiety could be eased soon in Illinois, thanks to a bill in the General Assembly.
A House bill introduced in February seeks to allow families to post video or audio monitoring devices in their loved ones' nursing home rooms to keep an eye on things when they can't be there.
And much like body cameras for police officers, photographic evidence in a nursing home can provide a much more straightforward record of goings-on. It can both point out abuses and explain away bruising or other injuries one might naturally attribute to neglect or abuse.
It may sound like an intrusion on the rights of health care workers, but it can protect in equal measure nursing home residents as well as the people charged with their care.
The bill calls for these devices to be posted in plain sight, to be done so with the consent of the resident and any roommate and that the resident or family bear the cost for it and its installation. Tampering with the cameras or retaliating against a resident for using one would be considered a crime.
There is no doubt that these devices would act as a deterrent for those facilities that are less than caring.
They will be confirmation for the many others that are compassionate and respectable.
The measure, sponsored by several House Democrats as well as David Harris, an Arlington Heights Republican, has passed the House Human Services Committee and now is headed to the full House for consideration.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan is fully behind the bill.
As are we.