At least 98 elderly patients, many with Alzheimer’s disease or other mental impairments, have died after wandering away from their assisted-living facilities in recent years, according to more than 100,000 state inspection reports analyzed by The Washington Post. The dozens of deaths are the extreme cases in a trend of neglect across a $34 billion industry that has caused more than 2,000 seniors to get away from or be abandoned outside their care facilities, the newspaper reported. Such facilities charge families an average of $6,000 a month to care for their elderly parents. The causes of death turned up by the Post varied, with some patients drowning or being hit by cars, but more than 61 percent died of exposure to extreme heat or cold, including one 86-year-old Colorado woman whose family was told in 2021 that she “passed outside watching the sun set, an activity she loved” after she was ignored for six hours in a roasting courtyard. The Post noted that, since 19 states do not allow the public access to their state reports, the numbers discovered by the newspaper are “almost certainly” an undercount.
Read it at The Washington Post
