My Dad’s in the hospital, likely heading to a nursing home. He’s been falling a lot lately, and after his last fall he became so weak that he couldn’t get up out of a chair or bed. After 3 days of family members trying to care for him, we ended up taking him to the ER for a full evaluation, and as expected, there’s nothing wrong that they can find other than he’s old & worn out.
But on to the main question - this morning, I visited him, he was cranky but otherwise OK. He had both his hearing aids. About 4 hours after I left, my niece visited him, and one of his hearing aids is gone. She looked everywhere can can’t find it. The only thing we can think of is that when the aid changed his bed linens in between my leaving and her arriving, it either fell out or was jostled out when the aid moved him, and it got taken out with the dirty laundry.
We informed the nurses, and they said they’d keep an eye out. That said, our hospital has been in the news for the past year for a huge nursing shortage; they’re overworked and understaffed, and I’m not holding out much hope.
I did call the patient advocate and left a message; I suspect I won’t hear back until Monday.
So… is there any recourse? Does the hospital have any liability? We’re talking a few thousands dollars to replace (hearing aids ain’t cheap) and insurance doesn’t cover them. It’s pretty clear it happened on their watch, since it was there when I was visiting him and gone by the time my niece got there. He can’t get out of bed alone, so he didn’t misplace it. Man, it’s bad enough that we’re having to go through the whole sucky thing of probably putting him in a nursing home, but now we have to deal with not being able to trust the hospital to not lose needed and expensive medical equipment?!?
if the hospital can’t find it or won’t replace it you can report them to the state board that licenses hospitals. That should get their attention fast.
If the hearing aid was, as you thought, mixed in with the bed linens, you want to find it before the load goes through the machine. I’d ask them now to see if someone can find the bag containing the sheets. (Obviously, someone will need to take the time to go through them, but perhaps someone in environmental services will be willing to do so.)
I called the nurses station and asked for this as soon as I heard it was gone; their answer was pretty much “yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
I’ve thought of this as well. A last resort, but it might be our only choice.
I did have someone who used to be a nurse at this hospital tell me that when she was there, they would have replaced it. That said, the hospital has been sold since then, and who knows what their policy is now. I plan on following up with the patient advocate tomorrow.
