My wife has a horse in a stable 17 miles away. She wishes the stable allowed stall cameras so she could check on her horse remotely on days she cannot be there. The doggie daycare we patronized years ago had video cameras allowing clients to check on their dogs throughout the day. Many of my neighbors have Ring doorbell cameras to monitor the comings and goings of people around their property. Increasingly people with loved ones in nursing homes are installing cameras to monitor the care of their family members.
During Covid families were locked out of nursing homes for months on end. Many merely wanted to view their loved ones, while others want to ensure their loved ones are receiving the care they’re paying for. The New York Times reports that about 20 states have laws permitting families to install cameras in the rooms of institutionalized loved ones to monitor their care.
The assisted-living facility in Edina, Minn., where Jean H. Peters and her siblings moved their mother in 2011, looked lovely. “But then you start uncovering things,” Ms. Peters said.
Her mother, Jackie Hourigan, widowed and developing memory problems at 82, too often was still in bed when her children came to see her in mid-morning.
“She wasn’t being toileted, so her pants would be soaked,” said Ms. Peters, 69, a retired nurse-practitioner in Bloomington, Minn. “They didn’t give her water. They didn’t get her up for meals.” She dwindled to 94 pounds.
Most ominously, Ms. Peters said, “we noticed bruises on her arm that we couldn’t account for.” Complaints to administrators — in person, by phone and by email — brought “tons of excuses.”
The average cost of long-term care is about $100,000 a year. Depending on the level of services, fees equate to anywhere from $6,000 a month for assisted living to $12,000 for memory care. On a daily basis, the services range from $200 a day to $400 but vary by region. Families paying $400 a day rightly expect their loved ones to be awakened, diapers changed, bathed, dressed, and fed on schedule. As one can imagine, knowing someone is monitoring loved ones is an incentive to maintain quality if not improve patient care. Elder care facilities are less enthusiastic about the idea about patient monitoring.
Though they remain a contentious subject, cameras in care facilities are gaining ground. By 2020, eight states had joined Minnesota in enacting laws allowing them, according to the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care: Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington.
The legislative pace has picked up since, with nine more states enacting laws: Connecticut, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. Legislation is pending in several others.
California and Maryland have adopted guidelines, not laws. The state governments in New Jersey and Wisconsin will lend cameras to families concerned about loved ones’ safety.
Some of the recent laws apply only to nursing homes, while others include other types of facilities such as assisted living. Privacy is a main concern. Privacy advocates warn that roommates and staff should be aware of the presence of cameras. Other concerns deal with who can view the footage, whether elder care homes can reject to evict residents whose families want to use cameras. Another concern is who should be allowed to overhear legal and spiritual guidance of seniors in nursing homes.
Cameras are becoming ubiquitous in our society. As mentioned earlier, doorbell cameras record movement outside our front doors, while shops have cameras to detect shoplifting. Police wear cameras for society’s protection as well as their own. Commercial vehicles often have dashcams. Temu, the purveyor of mostly imported goods from China, recently offered Wi-Fi-enabled cameras for as little as $4 apiece. Nannycams, clandestine cameras parents could use to monitor babysitters, have been around for years. Cameras can also be used to stay in touch and communicate with loved ones.
The New York Times concludes by not reaching a conclusion, quoting an academic gerontologist who claims there is no evidence cameras improve quality of care nor deter abuse and neglect. The gerontologist opined that cameras were more of a symptom of the problem rather than a solution. Why can’t cameras be both a symptom and part of the solution?
Read more at NYT: Why Cameras Are Popping Up in Eldercare Facilities