Some of the worst nursing homes in Wisconsin continue to violate state and federal regulations designed to protect our sickest and most vulnerable seniors. And a FOX6 Investigation shows you where they are, so you can make an informed decision before placing your loved one in a troubled nursing home.
FOX6 Investigators: Wisconsin’s worst nursing homes | FOX6Now.com – Milwaukee News & weather from WITI Television FOX6:
When Richard Witt was a younger man, he had the talent of an Olympic figure skater and the good looks to land any girl. But there was only one girl he wanted. He married Kathy Witt on November 23rd, 1963.
“It was the day after President Kennedy was assassinated,” Richard Witt recalls. “It’s a terrible way to remember that.”They spent the next 44 years raising a family in Hartford, Wisconsin, where Richard was elected mayor in 1983.
But politics were never Kathy’s thing. She preferred to be outdoors, interacting with nature and playing with her grandchildren.
“It was a good life,” Witt says.
The good life got harder when Kathy was diagnosed with cancer in 1990.
“The doctors at that time were telling me that she had maybe two weeks to live,” Witt said.
But Kathy was a fighter. She survived ovarian cancer. Then brain cancer. Cervical cancer. Spine cancer. And, finally, breast cancer. Five cancers in 18 years and Kathy beat them all.
She had fallen from her bed and struck her head on the floor. She was flown to Froedtert Hospital. The next day, Richard made the heart-wrenching decision to remove his wife from life support.
“And the nurse came in and said, ‘Mr. Witt she’s gone,’” Witt describes, his voice quivering, tears welling up in his eyes.
What happened at Mayville Nursing and Rehabilitation would become the subject of a wrongful death lawsuit and testimony before the Wisconsin Senate.
“The alarm did go off on the nurses desk, so she did try to get someone to help her,” Witt said during his testimony in January of 2011.
Witt told state lawmakers his wife wasn’t supposed to get up without assistance and a blood pressure check. But when she pressed the nurse call button that day, nobody came. So she tried to get up on her own.
“One nurse walking a patient to another room happened to notice her sitting on the edge of her bed, yelled back down the hallway stating that Kathy was sitting on the edge of the bed, and the other nurse said, ‘I’ll get there as soon as I can,’” Witt told the Senators.
But by the time staff members got there, Kathy was already on the floor.
“Granted you have a lot of patients down these halls, but that is not my problem,” Witt now declares. “That is your problem.”
The wrongful death lawsuit was dismissed after an out-of-court settlement, but in the years since Kathy’s death, Mayville Nursing and Rehab has been repeatedly cited by state and federal inspectors for providing residents with poor quality care.
A FOX6 investigation found that no other Wisconsin nursing home has been fined more money for health violations the past three years than Mayville.
by Bernard Hamill
Nursing Home Abuse
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