Did you know that California law allows counties to create Elder Death Review Teams? It does — and San Francisco has one!
The teams — comprising law enforcement officials and caregiving professionals — help identify and review suspicious deaths of elderly people. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, has introduced legislation (AB 535) requiring nursing homes to report deaths to the teams and making it easier for the teams to obtain death-related documents and information from nursing facilities.
I’m guessing this will end up on the Fox News ticker as “California Elder Death Review Teams to Get Information From Nursing Homes.”
Death Review Teams began in the LA County Health Department and spread across the country. Google them. They began with investigating the death of children. Until I read your post, I didn't know about the Elder Death Review Teams.
As a non-television person, I don't understand your remark about FOX News, but I do know that the data in my county (much smaller than SF) has been skewed repeatedly. Here, the death of a child, "child" defined as age 22 and under (check CDC for their age of "child" for statistical purposes - 19?), is investigated as you describe. The parents, family or caretakers are not privy to any of the information, parents cannot contribute information, and strangers have access to all records regarding the child/family, and neither the family nor the public is privy to the report generated by the team.
The team then creates statistics to justify the implementation of social programs and/or laws, such as those further eroding parental rights. In my small county, the data was fairly easy to research, because there weren't that many accidental or suicide deaths involving children or young adults. For instance, there was one child's death listed as a vehicular homicide. The problem was that no cases of VH in our county involving a child existed for the subject time period. The Death Review Team had decided that in their opinion this was a case of VH and it showed up in their stats as such. In the subject accident, the parent driver was not ticketed for anything, not even speeding, much less VH. It was an accident, plain and simple.
Another example is when a child is shot with a gun, the stats have been used to implement laws regarding firearms. Most people do not realize that "child" for statistical purposes is what most persons would define as young adult. I'd have to look again to see the exact age. All of the deaths I researched were related to gang violence, or the death of a young adult by suicide (usually male), not a "child" finding a gun.
Any time that people with an agenda - political, religious, or otherwise - have access to confidiential information, and their work is protected (hidden) from the public, there is the potential for abuse - it's just human nature. Power without public scrutiny will always be a problem, no matter how well-intentioned the individual participants.
These are just two examples of many, and I can't imagine how easy it would be to generate skewed stats in a county as large as yours. Most persons don't even know that Death Review Teams exist. There are many other problems and good examples, but check it out for yourself. If you are a curious person who enjoys numbers like myself, you'll find with very little perusal that most stats in the social policy realm are simply bogus.
Unfortunately, those in the "helping" professions are prone to suffer from the Messiah complex, and feel everyone should have the benefit of their better judgment, forcefully if necessary.
Posted by: Jenny | March 11, 2010 at 12:08