Word: packards
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Palo Alto attorney Von Packard has studied the death certificates of all Californians who died in nursing homes from 1986 through 1993. More than 7% of them succumbed, at least in part, to utter neglect--lack of food or water, untreated bedsores or other generally preventable ailments. If the rest of America's 1.6 million nursing-home residents are dying of questionable causes at the same rate as in California, it means that every year about 35,000 Americans are dying prematurely, or in unnecessary pain, or both. The investigations bear out something many Americans have suspected all along...
...Packard and his investigators, referred to as "hearse chasers" by some in the nursing-home trade, have begun contacting relatives of deceased patients whose California death certificates cite malnutrition, dehydration and other signs of neglect. They're often shocked to learn what killed their loved ones. "They don't know their parents died of malnutrition," says Dina Rasor, an investigator working for Packard, "until we tell them." Even more telling, the causes of death on California death certificates are often listed by doctors affiliated with the nursing home involved, suggesting that Packard's list may well understate the number...
Soon Rasor and investigator Robert Bauman heard of Swan's work. Intrigued, they began working with Packard to obtain records listing the cause and place of death for every Californian who died from 1986 to 1993. More than 300,000 had died in nursing homes...
What happened next surprised Rasor and Bauman most. Nearly 22,000 of the nursing-home deaths were attributed to lack of food or water, infections or internal obstructions--all preventable, at least in theory. Packard and his investigators didn't add deaths to their list if the deceased suffered from other ailments that exacerbated those four causes. So people who died of both cancer and malnutrition, for example, were not counted...
Until the last few years, advances in computers were met with advances in prices--no matter what the year, a new computer would set you back $2,500, no questions asked. You could buy a Packard Bell or Leading Edge system for half that amount, but they were stripped down machines that couldn't pull their weight...