The ABC15 Investigators continue to expose failures at long-term care facilities where seniors are wandering away and dying in the heat.
A new state law aims to give more oversight and protections to residents with dementia who live in assisted-living facilities. Earlier this year, the Arizona Legislature passed and the governor signed House Bill 2764.
“This was a huge bill,” said the bill’s sponsor, Arizona Representative Tim Dunn, R-Yuma.
Until now, Arizona has never had a law that defines what “memory care” means, despite many assisted-living facilities selling themselves as offering highly specialized care for people with dementia.
For the first time, the legislation requires the Arizona Department of Health Services to write standards for assisted-living facilities that provide memory care.
It’s not yet clear what those standards will say or how far they will go.
Here’s what we know so far:
The new law requires:
- 8 hours of memory care training for staff.
- 4 hours of continuing education each year.
- increases fines for violations at long-term care facilities from $500 to up to $1,000 for each violation.
“This is not the silver bullet that’s going to fix everything, “Dunn said. “But we’re going to systematically keep working on these things.”
The big question is whether the new standards will address what ABC15 has been reporting on for months – what are called elopements. Elopements refer to when people wander away from long-term care facilities unsupervised. In some cases, they die.
“A daycare facility probably has a lot more regulations than a memory care facility,” said Dana Kennedy, state director for AARP Arizona.
Last summer, 85-year-old Bob Pollmann walked out of a Scottsdale assisted-living facility. The staff didn’t notice him leaving. He had dementia and wasn’t allowed to walk outside by himself, according to a police report.
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His daughter, Becky Sadler, got a call from the care home after her father went missing.
“My first thought was, ‘We just need to find him immediately,’” she told ABC15 in an interview. “We need people searching in every direction in the neighborhood because it is too hot for anybody to be out here.”
They were unable to find him. Two days later, a neighbor returned home after being out of town. She called police, in tears. She had found a man’s body in the desert wash behind her home.
“I think it’s the elderly man that went missing,” she told the dispatcher.
The assisted-living facility where Pollman was staying declined to comment when contacted by ABC15. As ABC15 previously reported, he is one of at least a dozen people since 2017 who wandered out of Arizona care facilities and died in the heat.
“It happens more often than anybody ever thinks it happens,” said the AARP’s Kennedy.
Craig Knapp is an attorney, who is not involved in Pollmann’s case but has represented other families in elopement cases.
He said legislation is needed that mandates:
- Video cameras inside and outside buildings.
- Staff checking on residents every 15 minutes
- GPS tracking devices on ankles and wrists.
Those details are now up to each care facility and are not mandatory under Arizona law.
Dave Voepel is the chief operating officer with the Arizona Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. He believes the required training and higher fines in the new law will make a difference.
“If somebody advertises memory care, they need to actually do memory care,” he said.
Voepel said he doesn’t think elopements can be 100% prevented.
“We're humans taking care of humans, and we're going to have human mistakes,” he said. “The problem is when that mistake turns into a life, and that's what we're trying to stop.”
Dunn, the representative who sponsored the legislation, said he is concerned about seniors wandering away from care facilities. He said the topic likely will be taken up as part of a legislative study committee called the Vulnerable Adult System Study Committee. That committee just started meeting and will review and recommend changes in care over the next year.
Email ABC15 Investigator Anne Ryman at: anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook.
