MJP –
According to reports, over four years, an elderly living facility has made 151 distressing contacts with law enforcement.
Maggie Sutton, a case manager and social worker for the Greenfield Fire Department, observed a trend in the summer of 2022.
A few minutes away at The Villa of Greenfield was an assisted living home, and she saw that paramedics were attending to calls from there very often.
Some disturbing occurrences that Sutton was aware of were described by her.
One patient was discovered by paramedics soaked in pee and excrement after lying on the ground for twelve hours.
Another time, the building’s employees were fast sleeping, so paramedics had to smash a window to get inside.
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Patients who required help getting out of bed accounted for some of the 911 calls, but Sutton also noted that many of the patients were just lonely and isolated, which led them to ask for aid.
Sutton was concerned about the clients’ care and supervision after seeing a pattern of frequent emergency calls from the assisted living home.
Sutton is employed to assist individuals who make regular use of emergency services.
That frequently includes those residing in assisted living facilities, which are facing problems with finances, staff turnover, and the increasing medical demands of their clients on a statewide scale.
Conditions within the institution, which was primarily supported by Medicaid, did not improve as the summer progressed, according to Sutton.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that local first responders were experiencing a surge in calls.
She explained that she had warned them that she would soon be required to submit reports to the state.
During July and September, Sutton lodged a total of three complaints with the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
Nevertheless, she was not the only one: in 2022, the state had already processed 18 complaints regarding the facility, and seven more had been received since 2019.
The state’s probe was completed by October 2022.
There were 97 pages in the report.
Paramedics would frequently be waiting at Sutton’s office door in the summer of 2022 with updates on the most recent overnight visit to The Villa of Greenfield when she came to work at 8 a.m.
Sutton, a former CNA, stated, “They, to some degree, wanted me to see it with my own eyes as well.”
According to Sutton, the 42-bed facility flooded her senses the moment she stepped foot inside.
Residents were slumped over in wheelchairs, she smelt marijuana, feces, and urine, and she heard helpless cries for assistance.
The 151 occasions that the building was contacted by the police between 2019 and 2022 are documented in the records.
Recent reporting from the Journal Sentinel revealed that despite a doubling of the state’s assisted living capacity over the last 20 years, the system has failed to adequately address the increasing number of residents’ health concerns.
