This story happens all too frequently. An elderly nursing home resident who suffers from dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease wanders away from a facility and is found dead hours, days, weeks, or months later.
An investigation by the state of North Carolina shows that a nursing home in Concord made several mistakes, which could have played a role in the death of a patient. The report says that the staff and director of Five Oaks Manor knew that 87-year-old Annie Bell Scarboro could be in danger because she had wandered off before. Scarboro got through three sets of doors unsupervised. First, she went through the dining room doors. A worker says those doors hadn’t locked properly for at least eight months. Then, Scarboro went through the kitchen doors and out a back door leading to the loading dock. The back door, according to the report, had no alarm. Scarboro fell 4 feet off the loading dock .The “merry walker” chair she used to get around landed on top of her. A nurse who found Scarboro told inspectors, “I went out there and saw her blood was running everywhere.”
My Take: Mrs. Scarboro didn’t need to die…and she would be alive today had she received the proper care she and her family paid for.