Good Hurricane Ida Nurses Bad Nursing Home Owner
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Hey everybody, this is Tina again with Good Nurse, Bad Nurse. Welcome back to another episode of this podcast where we use stories from the news to discuss issues related to nursing and healthcare in general. And this week, actually, my co-host is in the studio with me, my husband, Mark. Hey, Mark. Hello. Hello.

He has been on the show several times over the years. Every now and then he comes in. It's been a while. It's probably been a couple of years, so I figured it was time. And this particular story that we're going to talk about for the Badner story is

is, I feel like it's going to be a good one for us to talk about. It's definitely going to shine a light on a major issue in healthcare. So I'm really anxious to get started. So we might as well just go ahead and dive into this. It's a pretty complicated story. There are lots and lots of details. So just kind of buckle up and hang on because there's so much

involved with the story. And as I was going through the show notes and trying to narrow it down so I didn't have so many details to just overwhelm people, it was really hard because this is the type of story that you don't want to leave the details out. You want people to know this is what happened. So just kind of bear with me as we get through the details of this story.

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So this is the story of what happened to some nursing home patients down in Louisiana during Hurricane Ida several years ago, back in 2021, which is a very, very bad thing.

For me, 2021 was really the height of the pandemic. By 2021, I had been in CVICU for a year, and I just remember being completely overwhelmed that whole year. It's just almost a blur. It was kind of crazy. Yeah, well...

I remember my parents being in extended living, assisted living, while dad was recovering from a stroke. And just, I relate to this story in that way. Exactly. And that's a main reason why I felt like this was going to be a good story for us to do. Both of us can relate to it on a personal level. I can definitely relate to it as a nurse. And I think anybody listening to this is going to be able to relate to this on some level, one level or another, because...

At any point in time, any of us could be in a situation where we, if not one of our loved ones, you know, one of us, we could have to be in a nursing home. I mean, heaven forbid, it's just, it happens. So on August 28th of 2021, Bob Dean, the owner of seven nursing homes in Louisiana, allegedly made the decision to move over 800 nursing home residents to a warehouse in

in Tangapahoa Parish in Louisiana in order to evacuate in preparation for Hurricane Ida. So Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday morning, August 29th in 2021 at 1155 a.m. as a Category 4 hurricane. So by September the 1st, the state of Louisiana was scrambling to get these residents to safety.

So the Louisiana Department of Health later confirmed seven deaths of nursing home residents evacuated to that facility, five of which were actually classified as being related to the storm. LDH learned that facility planned, well, all these different, there were seven different ones, planned to evacuate on Friday, August the 27th. And they said that

The state had advised all residents that were in impacted areas to be wherever they were going to be to ride out the storm by Saturday. So they're basically saying, you know, we didn't even find out that these facilities were going to evacuate until Friday. And it was...

They understood that if you're going to evacuate, you need to be wherever you need to be by Saturday. So I think they were kind of saying we didn't have a lot of time to make a decision as to whether or not it was appropriate, an appropriate decision. Mm-hmm.

Had this ever happened before with this, do you know, this particular facility owner? Nothing was said. I didn't find anywhere where there was any kind of accusations. I'm not saying that there weren't, but I didn't see that. Okay. So they did two in-person site visits before this.

Hurricane Ida made landfall, and it did appear from a facility standpoint that they had the minimum necessary components to provide a safe sheltering environment for a very short period of time. That is according to the Department of Health. So conditions clearly deteriorated after the storm. They said residents' basic needs

care needs were not met. Residents were in varying stages of undress. They weren't adequately attended to. There were piles of linens and trash on the floor, a stench of urine and feces throughout the building. And it was clear to hospitals that some of these residents had to be transferred out to hospitals. Now, was this a staffing issue? I don't know. Okay.

800 people. That's a lot of people. Well, across seven facilities. They were all taken to this same warehouse. Right. That's yeah. And that's the thing, you know, we can talk about that, you know, whether or not it's even reasonable to expect a facility to be able to handle a situation like this. I mean, what are you supposed to do? You have seven facilities. They're all in an area where they're going to be

potentially at risk. And if they stay and kind of hunker down where they are, they're going to be at risk for flooding. Yeah, if something terrible had happened, they would have said, why didn't you evacuate? Right. So just kind of keeping that in mind. Staffing is already an issue in nursing homes. It's an issue everywhere, but especially in nursing homes. Yeah, that's what came to my mind is the staffing was always a problem, even where my parents were. Mm-hmm.

So if it's already an issue and then there's a hurricane coming, do you think that those staff are not going to just be like, no, sorry, I'll find another job, but I'm not going to risk my life to come into work? I think that there are a lot of people who would risk their life, and I know that there are people that do.

But I think that at the same time, there's probably people who would be like, you know, you really don't pay me enough to do to to risk my life to do the job. Yeah. And there's people who make a living planning big events. I just wonder how prepared this owner was to to do something that quickly.

And to think through. Well, part of the responsibility of an owner of a facility like this is to have a plan in place. There has to be a plan, you know, a disaster plan in place for facilities before anything like this happens. It's not acceptable to just like, oh, there's a hurricane coming. Now what? Mm-hmm.

This is something that contingency plan. Absolutely. This is what will happen. This is what we will do. This is where we will go. And that is supposed to already be in place beforehand. The operator of these nursing homes failed to communicate that this was a dire situation to the state and ask for help. This is according to the Louisiana Department of Health. They did not reach out to us and say, we're in trouble. We need help.

When they received concerns from different third parties about the deteriorating conditions, they went on site for an inspection and they were allegedly asked to leave and then prevented from completing an assessment. So there's definitely some contention between the Department of Health and the facility owner. Yeah.

So LDH says that as soon as they had confirmed conditions at the facility had deteriorated, they took immediate action. They said that by Wednesday and Thursday, so this hit landfall by Sunday. So they said by Wednesday and Thursday, they were working around the clock to get residents to immediate safety. But imagine that.

they were sent there, they evacuated that Friday or that Saturday. So that's how long they were in these conditions before. I mean, by Wednesday or Thursday, they had been there for days in these conditions. It really sinks in to me when I think about what it takes to take care of the elderly, which we know we did it with both my parents. And

I just can't imagine how quickly things can deteriorate with 800 people who need medicines and need to go to the bathroom and...

Yeah.

The state stepped in and we're like, we're going to get these, you know, 800 people to other facilities. That had to have been, you know, in a state that our country is in when it comes to nursing homes, they tend to be overcrowded. They tend to be kind of full hospitals are overcrowded. It's, this is in the height at the height of COVID. I cannot imagine how in the world they were able to get these. In the middle of a hurricane. In the middle of a hurricane or during the aftermath of a hurricane. Yeah.

I just don't know how they managed to do this, but somehow they did. So when Bob Dean, the owner of the nursing homes, was asked about the situation, he allegedly said that they did a good job given the circumstances. One article quoted him as saying, we only had five deaths within the six days and normally with 850 people, you'll have a couple a day. So we did really good with taking care of people.

Well, I imagine it's not uncommon to have a death a day at a facility, so maybe he's not. Well, the problem is that the five deaths were attributed to the storm. There were more deaths than that. The five deaths were basically, they were saying these deaths were related to the storm. They would not have happened had it not been for the storm. Right.

But just to play a little devil's advocate, you don't know what would have happened if they didn't evacuate. Oh, I agree. And I'm in no way saying, I really do want to kind of hash this out and talk about it because it is really easy to play Monday morning quarterback in situations like this. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Is there anything said about questioning the motives for the evacuation? Was it- A little bit of that comes out. Okay.

When asked about why state investigators were kicked off the property, he said that it was to protect the privacy of the residents inside. He also claims the state tried to enter the place illegally. He said the Fourth Amendment says that they have to have a warrant to come on private property, much less seize persons or properties. So they came on here illegally. So essentially he was saying that he was able to tell them you can't come here because they didn't have a warrant.

So the way they were looking at it is we're getting calls saying that people are concerned for the conditions that your residents are living in. And we want to come in and

You would think that if you would think that an owner would want them to stay. OK, come in. Can you help? We need help. You know, you would be asking for help in this situation. Yeah. Rather than turning help away.

So that was a little suspect to me. Representatives with the Louisiana Department of Health said that their top priority was getting the residents to safety and that by Thursday they reported 721 of those residents were rescued. So in October of 2021, three female residents who said that they endured horrific conditions while evacuating ahead of Hurricane Ida, they filed a lawsuit.

against the facility and its owner. And according to the lawsuit, Bob Dean misrepresented the suitability of the warehouse in Independence, which is Independence is the name of the little town where this warehouse was. So the lawsuit is saying that the owner misrepresented the suitability of the warehouse to state and local officials by claiming that the building's capacity was 200 to 400 and that only 300 residents would be moved into the facility.

As opposed to all 800 and something. But didn't you say earlier that it had been inspected and approved by someone? Yeah, and that was the argument. Okay. Yeah, that was the argument of Bob Dean and his attorneys. What the residents of the facility said is that upon arrival, they were stunned to learn that they were among approximately 840 nursing home residents in

So once inside the warehouse, the residents said that they were forced to sleep on mats and mattresses directly on the floor.

Little to no space was provided between the mats, removing any semblance of privacy, and more importantly, also exposing plaintiffs to increased risk of communicable disease such as COVID-19.

Defendants were also ill-prepared to provide for the basic hygiene requirements of the approximate 840 evacuees. Plaintiffs did not have adequate access to lavatories or showers. They were forced to relieve themselves in makeshift portable toilets that were not cleaned nor emptied, either that or forced to use a bucket lined with a garbage bag. Okay, so I'm just trying to imagine this and put myself there. You know, what...

It's one thing to make the decision to do the evacuation, but once you're there and once you look around and see the conditions, then what? I mean, that's the question that comes to my mind is what was he doing about the situation once it deteriorated? Right.

Some of the residents said that they urinated and defecated on themselves and were not cleaned or relieved of their soiled diapers. They were subjected to unconscionable odors of feces, vomit, and urine. Apparently, the building's air conditioning unit also failed, and the residents suffered dehydration and nausea, according to the lawsuit.

So as these conditions in the warehouse deteriorated, Bob Dean's company tried to conceal, according to this lawsuit, the, quote, abhorrent nature of the circumstances by not alerting the State Department of Health that the residents were in dire straits. So instead, when the...

As we said earlier, when the Louisiana Department of Health got there to the facility, this lawsuit is saying that the defendant, Bob Dean, and other representatives of the defendants refused to grant access for inspection and demanded LDH leave the premises.

If you stop and think about the situation, it's a hurricane. It's a category four hurricane. You're in an area that's notorious for being flooded anyway. And you have 840 vulnerable people to try to put somewhere. So you think, well, what are the possibilities? What is someone going to do? Well, I could look at it one way and say,

Maybe what are they supposed to do in that situation? But the fact of the matter is that if you take on the responsibility of owning a facility like this, where you are housing a vulnerable population, you have to be held accountable. And I, I agree, you know, I, there's just no other, there's no other answer. I mean, you can't just say, Oh, but it's a hurricane. Sorry. You know, yep. Let them do whatever they want to because they,

there are people who, and I'm not saying that this particular man did this, but I'm saying there are people who would take advantage of the situation and in order to hide maybe the conditions from the state or whatever. So yeah, you definitely have to hold them accountable, but yeah,

Yeah, so you know, so many times, like the true crime stories, there's the back story that comes out of the motives behind something. So you know, that's what I keep looking for. If there's no obvious financial gain or some reason that he would be trying to hide or escape some other problems that he's facing,

Then, you know, I could write a lot of this off just a bad decision and got himself over his head. But I still have a hard time with what is he doing now that he's in the mess. Right.

What is happening? So according to the Department of Health, there were the five deaths that we said that were directly linked to the evacuation. But there were 27 other nursing home residents who were removed to the warehouse that have also died. Multiple lawsuits have since been filed against Dean and the seven nursing homes he owns that were involved in the deadly evacuation. Those facilities have all since been shut down by the health department.

John McClendon, who is a Baton Rouge attorney, represented Bob Dean. And he said in an interview that the Louisiana Department of Health approved the evacuation plan before the storm made landfall. He said the LDH had employees at the facility on August 27th and 28th, two days and one day before the hurricane made landfall.

He said the LDH checked it out and put in their report that there were plenty of supplies, water, and everything looked good. And then, unfortunately, the storm shifted east and

and went over Independence, Louisiana, where the facility was. It caused some problems, but I don't think they are as bad as it's being portrayed. And that was according to Bob Dean's attorney, which of course, what else is he going to say? If five people died as a direct result of the storm, I don't think you can just go, well, hey, five people died, and hey, that ain't bad. I mean, those are five lives. And the people who, quote, died and were going to die anyway, or however you want to, you know, they were...

even if they were on hospice or whatever, the last moments of their lives were in these conditions that it's not acceptable. It's absolutely not acceptable. I don't care if they, and we had the same conversation. I had the same conversation with Christine several years ago about Katrina and that whole situation there. So many things went wrong and it, a lot of it had to do with the healthcare tenant healthcare situation.

that owned that hospital at the time. But the fact is that if you're going to put yourself, you know, in a position to be responsible for people's lives, then you have to step up and do whatever, you know, you've got to be there. Well, if you just take it on the surface, the report stated that he was in a good place in the beginning. He had the people, he had the supplies, but

So to me, it sounds like there was an effort made to do this right.

And then it all fell apart. Yeah. Whether it was staffing, like you said earlier, staffing didn't show up or they ran out of stuff. Maybe they had enough supplies for two days, one to two days, but not four or five days. And if you have 840 people and at first you've got enough supplies, those supplies can dwindle very quickly. And if just a few people, if you had...

some staff and then just a few of those people kind of dropped off. You're in big trouble. You're in big trouble. And what I don't really understand is it did that. Did the state department, did the department of health understand that there were going to be 840 people in that facility? Did they really think that there were going to be 840 people? Because that's what I really don't understand how they looked at this warehouse where they said people were, you know, on mattresses on the floor, you know,

almost touching one another. Yeah, I mean...

Just from what I've heard you say, I feel like there's some culpability there from the state. Exactly. I definitely think somebody dropped the ball. Now, I know that they tried to scramble around and fix it a few days later. And thank goodness they did. There's definitely some passing the buck that's going on here. It's like, well, you know, yeah, everything was fine, you know, day one. But then three, four days later. So you approved 40%.

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Well, the estate of Bob Dean has been ordered to pay survivors, according to one article, of the evacuation and their attorneys over $12 million. Bob Dean was charged in June of 2022 with neglect and other crimes. He surrendered to the Louisiana Attorney General's office and was jailed on eight counts of cruelty to infirmed people.

five counts of healthcare fraud, and two counts of obstruction of justice. A statement from Louisiana's attorney general, Jeff Landry, alleged that Dean had billed the federal Medicaid program for dates. His residents were not receiving care, refused to move residents out of the warehouse and quote, engaged in conduct intended to intimidate or obstruct public health officials and law enforcement. Besides losing his license and federal funding to operate his seven nursing homes in Louisiana, in Louisiana,

His attorneys have said Dean is battling dementia and other memory problems. I, okay, now what do you do? You have, stop and think about that. You have a man who owns seven, he's obviously at some point was a brilliant businessman if you don't just accidentally stumble upon owning seven nursing homes. But what do you, what happens when somebody who is in a position like that

Gets dementia or maybe they start like the early stages of it where it's it's kind of hard to just assume power over someone, you know, there. So that kind of threw a whole wrench in it when I when I read that part. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the fraud, you know, kind of.

raises some flags for me. If they're actually saying that they found where he lied to Medicare, you know, about patients being taken care of on days they weren't. I mean, that's very indicting of his character, I think. Well, here's the thing about Medicare.

If a hospital bills Medicare taking care of a patient in ICU and it somehow found out that the nurse had more than two patients, that could be considered Medicare fraud because according to Medicare, it's supposed to be a one to two ratio in order to be able to bill as ICU. Okay. So if...

Medicare could look at, they have their own, they make their own rules. I mean, that is just the way it is. We've talked about that before on this podcast, man. They are, they're in charge. They're the largest provider of healthcare coverage. There is, there's no entity, you know, that could afford to run, you know, to stay open as far as like a hospital and not have CMS to, you know, be able to pay for their, you know, to cover their patients.

When the attorney general is accusing him of Medicare fraud, it could be something like you said you were providing care and they were laying on a mattress. That's not really providing care. You know what I'm saying? It's not necessarily- Paint a picture. Right. Exactly. I guess you could say it's splitting hairs, but-

CMS does that for a reason because they have to hold facilities to a standard or they will do whatever they can to cut corners and not, you know, so that it's like that for a reason. It's to protect the patient. So some of these patients supposedly came without their medications.

I'm sure it was a nightmare, a logistical nightmare to transport for all these patients. Can you imagine? From a facility over to this makeshift facility.

So some people ended up over there without their medications. Now, once you get there, what are you going to do? I cannot imagine being a nurse, having my patients and having no way to get their meds. Especially your dementia patients. Well, your dementia patients, your diabetic patients, your blood patients. I mean, you know, there's a lot. All of it is important. All of it is important.

Obviously, the conditions devolved rapidly. Generators used to provide electricity, they were failing. Indoor temperatures were getting at dangerously high levels. The ceilings were leaking. Toilets overflowing. Inadequate food and water for residents packed in so closely it was impossible. Obviously, we said earlier, follow social distancing guidelines, which, again, sometimes...

You're just like in these situations, you're like, okay, what's more important to keep somebody from drowning? Like you had to move them. So at some point you have to be reasonable as far as like, what can you possibly do? The most serious charges that were filed against him were the ones alleging cruelty to people with infirmities under Louisiana law. Any one of those counts could carry up to 10 years in prison if he were to have been convicted. Yeah.

Well, in November of 2022, Louisiana issued new evacuation rules. So they set to work pretty quickly, the lawmakers, about, you know, just about a year after the incident. That's a lot. That's pretty fast. That is. You know, when you think about how slowly our...

The legislation tends to move. I know I've been involved in some of these things and it's just, it's frustrating. It can be very frustrating. The regulations establish requirements for the home's unlicensed evacuation shelters like churches, school gymnasiums, auditoriums, and other non-medical facilities.

So, basically, you're saying, okay, we're going to set some regulations up here. And they're saying they need at least 60 square feet per person for sleeping areas. They need adequate ventilation, working heat and air conditioning systems. It kind of seems a little bit like commons. Yeah. Like, why would you even have to say this? Yeah.

The regulations also established guidelines for the number of showers, which they said one for every 15 people. Handwashing stations, one for every 15 people. Toilets, one for every 20 people. And then they said that the states would be allowed, they would allow nursing homes to apply for waivers if for some reason it just wasn't possible for them to do that. Mm-hmm.

And I guess they would take that on a case-by-case basis. Well, health and disaster preparation officials were going to be required to inspect these shelters at least once a year. And if they are denied access, the health department will be entitled to revoke the license of the nursing home. So those new rules that they put in place in 2022 were temporary.

And they adopted them because of an emergency approval process that was only supposed to last six months. So permanent regulations that were similar, if not exactly the same, were expected to come about within the following year. So in 2023, the Louisiana House of Representatives voted 103 to 0 to allow nursing homes to continue to operate, even if their emergency preparedness and evacuation plan failed to meet state standards. So

I kind of get it. I mean, they're basically saying, oh, just flat out shut the place down if your plan that you have in place, if should something happen, if it doesn't meet our standards. So I get like loosening up on that a little bit. Under the new law, the Louisiana Department of Health would have discretion to keep a nursing home open, even if the home's emergency plan was deemed inadequate by state officials.

The sponsor of the bill, Republican Representative Joseph Stagney, said nursing homes need more flexibility than the current law allows. Louisiana implemented a more stringent vetting process for nursing home evacuation plans just a few months ago, and the homes needed more time to respond to their new set of mandates.

Okay, so they're just basically saying, you know, give them a little time to respond to these new laws. Right. There has to be a give and take because it's still a business. Someone's going to just roll up and go home and then you're going to have a bigger problem. Then you're not going to have anywhere for people to go. Right. Stagney's bill would return essentially all the authority for overseeing the Holmes evacuation plans back to the health department, which, what did we say earlier? Right.

Seemed like there was a ball dropped at some point. So we're putting it back into the hands of the people who sort of seemed to maybe drop the ball before, but...

State health officials said they wouldn't hesitate to shut down nursing homes that have significant problems with their evacuation plans if Stagney's bill passes. Instead, the agency would use the flexibility offered by the bill to resolve minor issues with the evacuation proposals, according to the agency spokesman. If a nursing home receives a rejection letter and cannot adequately resolve its issues, therefore it is not able to ensure patient health and safety in the event of a storm and evacuation, LDH would issue a license revocation notice.

Okay. And if that's the case, I mean, it seems like there should be a process. Okay. Look, you have to have a plan in place, a disaster preparedness plan in place, ready to go. What is your plan? Show us. You have to show us. It has to be doable. It has to be time sensitive. You can't just – it has to be something that you absolutely can implement quickly. Yeah. Yeah.

And if they don't have a plan like that, okay, we'll give you a little time. Come back. Do you have it? No. Okay, well, then here's your notice. We're about to revoke your license. And then if they don't, then, well, you don't need to be running the nursing home, right? Right, right.

So critics of the nursing home industry are always skeptical that the state health department will be tough in exacting on nursing homes because nursing homeowners are big political campaign contributors to governors and state lawmakers. So basically people are saying, yeah, well, the people who own these nursing homes. In fact, Bob Dean allegedly gave the governor's reelection campaign in 2019, $42,000. Interesting. Yeah.

He knows where his bread is buttered. Exactly.

You know, it's kind of like saying putting the fox in charge of the hen house, you know. Nursing home owners contributed about $400,000 to Governor John Bel Edwards' first gubernatorial campaign, according to the advocate. Two lawmakers also have financial interests in nursing homes. Republican Senators Fred Mills and Bob Henskins are partial owners in different facilities and sit on the Senate Health and Welfare Committee that considers legislation dealing with nursing homes. Wow.

No conflict of interest there. Not at all. I swear. This is why, you guys, this is why I wanted to do this story. Because we have got to be paying attention to what is going on in politics. We can't just close our eyes and just live our lives and just hope that everything's going to be okay. And that has nothing to do with me. This stuff affects all of us.

And if you just let people go and let them do whatever they want to, this is what happens. These are the people who make our laws. They're essentially governing themselves. These are the people who own nursing homes. It's insane. It's ridiculous. So the Louisiana Nursing Home Association, who...

also represents the owners, is also backing that new bill. The Louisiana Senate was supposed to take up this bill for consideration, but I couldn't find where they've dealt with it since then. And I've discovered since trying to get involved, as I said earlier, you know, with getting legislation passed regarding different issues affecting nurses, that these bills can be proposed in the House and then just sit there. So I don't know. Who knows? Who knows?

Maybe that original amendment that they proposed in 2022, maybe it's still there. Maybe they did issue another emergency thing. Who knows? But the fact is that if another, you know, we were talking before, there's a hurricane hitting Florida as we speak. And there are plenty of nursing homes down there in Florida, as we well know.

So what is happening? Who is protecting this very vulnerable population of people? We have to have legislation. Our government absolutely has to be looking out for any kind of vulnerable population like the elderly population.

children, people in prisons, people who absolutely have no, these people had no power. They were trapped. They absolutely had to do because they could not go anywhere else. That's why they were in a nursing home. So when they said, we're going to another facility, then we're going to another facility. I mean, unless they had family that could come and pick them up and maybe some of them did, but if otherwise you're just, you are along for the ride. You have to do whatever they say.

And that's a scary place to be. So if we don't have lawmakers who will hold these people accountable...

We could all at some point be in this situation. Lawmakers expressed outrage that Bob Dean had put nursing home residents on air mattresses on the floor for days. They balked at the idea that elderly people were being asked to use portable toilets. They said the idea that we allow standards where portalettes inside a building is an acceptable standard. There's no kitchen in there. We had men and women lying on the floor, according to one of these senators.

She said, this is something we should hold our heads in shame about as a body because we should have addressed the lack of standards a long time ago. The new standards, however, still allow homes to use portable toilets and they are silent on what type of bed or cot or air mattress qualifies as adequate sleeping area. And that's the thing. I mean, I remember it with Hurricane Katrina, you know, and they opened up those big indoor football arenas and, and,

What's the alternative for people to just be in homes that are going to be underwater or for people to be out and have no shelter whatsoever? This is something that has to be handled way ahead of time. Right. I think that's the main takeaway. Yeah. Is this all has to be thought out and planned and-

you know, way in advance of these storms. Absolutely. And resources have got to be allocated for it. Health officials cited 16 other nursing homes for having inadequate evacuation facilities after site visits that summer. Many shelters didn't have enough space, showers or sinks for the number of people they would have to house. So this was not an isolated incident, but in this case, it was

It was just, you know, the deficits were exaggerated. You know, they were a lot worse. Well, this is, we're here in July, we're here in August of 2024. And just last month, Bob Dean pleaded no contest to 15 criminal counts and was sentenced to three years of probation. He also has to pay more than $358,000 in restitution to the state health department and more than a million dollars as

as a monetary penalty. But State Attorney General Liz Murrell expressed frustration in a news release that Dean didn't get any prison time. So she was not happy that he didn't go to prison. Now he's 70 years old, according to his attorney, maybe he's suffering from dementia. And I think that

But I think her frustration is saying, if this is the precedent that we're setting, people are not going to be motivated to do anything else. He pleaded no contest to eight counts of cruelty to the infirmed, two counts of obstruction of justice, and five counts of Medicaid fraud.

Judge Brian Ables sentenced him to a total of 20 years in prison, but deferred the sentences in favor of three years of probation. The plea was entered in Tangapahoa, just north of New Orleans. Defendants who plead no contest were

Do not admit guilt, but elect not to defend against the charges. So they basically say, I'm not saying I did it, but I'm not going to defend myself against the charges. So they're then subject to being convicted and punished as if there had been a guilty plea. So the judge could have given him 20 years. He just said no contest. The Louisiana AARP had a thing or two to say about it. The state director, Denise Botcher, issued a,

following statement in response to the deaths of the nursing home residents. They called on state and federal authorities to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the warehousing of vulnerable, medically fragile adults and seniors during Hurricane Ida. They said nursing homes have a duty to care for their residents, which includes planning for emergencies and evacuations. They also added these tragic deaths are the result of a complete failure of

Oversight, enforcement, and planning dating back more than a decade. In other words, this should have, as we have said all throughout this whole episode, this is something that should have been planned for way before, years before. Yeah, and she was being fair to say oversight as well as the enforcement. Yes.

She cast a pretty wide net. To everybody. Yes, because you have the facilities who...

are responsible and accountable. They are to be held accountable. They're responsible. But you also have the entities that are responsible for oversight, responsible for enforcing the regulations. And if they are not doing that, if they're walking up and going, yeah, this will house 840 people, no problem. And then walking away, yeah, that's a problem. Yeah.

They said nursing homes need stricter standards and more accountability. They were asking state leaders to reform the broken long-care system. Instead of spending billions on bleak, subpar, but expensive nursing homes, we should focus efforts on helping more seniors live in their own homes with support. I love that idea. Yeah, yeah. I do, too. We tend to want to institutionalize as opposed to allowing people as much independence as they can. It's not always possible, right?

But some of these people, they just need, you know, they need some care. If they just had some care in their home, they would be able to stay in their home. And they also said it's a privilege to hold a nursing home license. It's time to take it away from the facilities involved in this tragedy, which they did that. Yeah.

Well, that's a rough story. A lot to it. I get so passionate about stories like this because I get so frustrated over our lawmakers for not stepping up and doing something about it. Yeah. And the awareness to your audience is really important because, like you said in the beginning, it will touch all of us in one way or another eventually. Yeah.

So I have to tell you guys about an experience I had with a nursing student. So you know, I've been doing travel nursing. Well, this hospital where Matt has a lot of LPN students doing their clinicals there. So one of them was following me around one day and she noticed my stethoscope. And of course, y'all know the Echo Technology Company that sponsors our podcast. They teamed up with Littman to make the stethoscopes to beat all stethoscopes. The 3M Littman Core Digital Stethoscope.

And this is the one that I use now. So she said, Oh my gosh, I've been wanting to try one of those. So of course, I let her use it. And she just could not stop talking about it for the rest of the shift. It was so cute. She was like, No, I can't hear anything with my normal stethoscope, because I have tinnitus. And so she was so excited because she could actually hear what heart sounds were supposed to sound like. She said, I'm gonna ask for one of these for graduation. And I was like, Yeah, you definitely should. So just so you know,

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Well, I guess we can get to the good nurse portion. And I wanted to, one thing that I do know is that for every healthcare entity or even healthcare worker who did not do what they needed to do to take care of those vulnerable people, there are so many more who stepped up and put themselves in danger in order to take care of people during this

all sorts of disaster situations, but including Hurricane Ida, there are teams of people who way before the hurricane ever happens, decide that they will be on a team. They will say, if there is a hurricane, I will be on team A, I'll be on team B. And they go in

to the hospital when everybody else is trying to evacuate, they stay and they're, they stay there in the hospital and they take care of the patients. And this one team in particular, the Ellen DeGeneres had this group of nurses on her show and they are NICU nurses in particular. There were lots of nurses. I guarantee you that were, that did, that did this and that do this all the time, step up in these situations. Yeah.

This one particular article says a team of nurses specializing in intensive care for newborns volunteered to stay overnight at a leading New Orleans hospital as Hurricane Ida struck the city. This was at Ochsner Baptist Medical Center.

And they took care of 39 premature or sick babies throughout the night. And while most of the city was evacuating, including the infant's parents, Paula Jean Simon and her squad at the neonatal intensive care unit remained to ensure the health and safety of their young patients, many of whom were too vulnerable to transport away. They installed cameras everywhere.

into their cribs so that parents could see the children remotely and still feel like they were somewhat close to them. She said, my team pulls together. It doesn't matter what's happening. They're going to make sure the babies are taken care of. She is not a stranger to worrying about children herself. She's a mother of four.

And she wasn't able to see her family because she's there. So you can imagine maybe it would be difficult being there. I can sort of relate at the time when COVID was going on and everyone else was kind of hunkered down at home and no one, everyone was like, leave, like, no.

working from home and being in a long lockdown. And I was getting in my car and driving to work every day, you know, and working overtime, working, you know. Well, you were traveling a lot. Well, I did start traveling at one point, but it was just kind of, I think during the lockdown period, I was still working at the hospital, you know, where we live. But

I remember that feeling. It's sort of a conflicted feeling because on one hand, you know, I was watching the Ellen DeGeneres episode where she had these nurses on. And one of the nurses was pregnant at the time. She was like eight months pregnant with this going on.

It would have been easy for her to say, Mom, I'm pregnant. Sorry, I want to stay, but I can't. But she said, I couldn't allow myself to say no. I had to be there. But she said, and I also knew that if anything were to happen, I would be in great hands. She would be there in the hospital with all these nurses and doctors that are there that would be able to take care of her. Her husband is a police officer.

So he was apparently in the middle of it too. So people just really making a lot of sacrifice and risking their lives to take care of other people. Yeah.

Yeah. And I know during those storms, I've seen many stories. It's not just nurses. You have utilities workers that take off their jobs and go down and firefighters and police and so many others. Just a lot of good people out there. Yes, absolutely. And we're

you know, we, you know, in talking about the owner of the, the nursing home, you know, we want to shine a light on things like that, that happened. You have to talk about these things in order to make change in order to put pressure on lawmakers. You've got to get the word out. You have, you can't just like bury your head in the sand, but I,

I love that we get to end on a good note and talk about all of the wonderful people in health care. Because it's not just nurses, as you said. There's nurses, there are doctors, there are police officers, firefighters, medics, there's respiratory therapists, there's CNAs, so many different people. I'm a phlebotomist.

Every time I try to name off other people, somebody will email me and invariably somebody will email me and say, you never say. So I hope, I'm sure I know I've forgotten somebody. There's way too many people to be able to list them all. But the fact is that the healthcare team is made up of so many different people and professions and they're all important. If you take one away, it's going to put so much pressure on everyone else, which happens.

And so everybody is vital. It's so important to have every single person on the team. I guess that wraps it up for this episode. Thank you for coming and talking to me about stuff. Thank you for inviting me.

Well, guys, sorry, my voice is just about shot. I had actually kind of ironically, I had COVID this past week. I didn't even think to say that at the beginning of the show, but I had COVID this past week and I'm just now getting my voice sort of back. But in recording this episode, I realized it's not quite as back as I was hoping it was.

But I hope you guys are having a good week. And if you want, you can reach out to me. I love to hear from you at Tina at GoodNurseBadNurse.com. I'm on social media at GoodNurseBadNurse and our website, GoodNurseBadNurse.com. And of course, before we leave, I have to remind you, even if you're a bad girl or a bad boy, be a good nurse.