Introduction

No matter where you live in the world, chances are the only businesses you ever interact with are ones that are interested in making money. This is because the vast majority of businesses that exist in the world today are motivated by profit, and all of their activities are designed to earn profit. While some people would like to think that some places are exempt from this fact, the truth is that most places are interested in making a profit, and this includes most nursing homes.

There are the rare nursing homes in existence today that are non-profit organizations, but these types of homes are decreasing, and it is rare that you will find one during your search for a nursing home. All nursing homes are interested in making money, and this has some interesting side effects that we will explore further in this article.

Nursing Homes Profit Motive

As previously mentioned, the nursing home that you pick is very likely going to be a for profit nursing home and because of that it will definitely be doing everything that it can to make money. On the one hand, this is good for you because it means that the home will be treating you well in order to keep you as a customer. However, there are some negative effects of a nursing home that is only interested in profits.

There are generally two ways for a company to increase its profit. The first way that a company can increase its profit is to increase revenue, and nursing homes are able to do this by taking on more residents. However, at some point nursing home revenues get to a critical value when it is pulling in maximum revenue and have all of the different rooms its property filled. If the nursing home was to raise prices it would lose customers and the overall revenue might be lower. Generally speaking, once the revenue reaches that critical value then a good businessman will know to leave it alone.

The second way to increase profits is to reduce expenditures. Anything that reduces expenditures will ultimately be increasing profit and because of that nursing homes have come up with some very clever ways in order to reduce expenditures. Some of these ways are extremely clever while others are more suspicious.

One of the methods that a nursing home will employ in order to decrease expenses is to order products in no name bulk packages. Products like fruits, vegetables, chips, water, and everything else that a nursing home might need on a daily basis. These types of expenditure reductions are quite innovative and brilliant on their part, and while this is great there is also another, less innovative place that many nursing homes choose to cut expenditures.

This place is their staff. Many nursing homes end up purposefully hiring under-qualified or inexperienced staff for positions they consider to be of low profile. These people normally end up working just as well as their qualified and experienced counterparts. In addition to that, the home will save money on their paychecks. It is this attitude that has led to a marked increase in the number and type of elder abuse cases being reported each year.

Legalities

If you are wondering about the legalities involved with nursing home profit motives, or you are interested in finding out more about the legal rights of nursing home residents, the best thing for you to do is contact a lawyer. A lawyer will be very knowledgeable about these topics and will be able to provide you with a great deal of useful information that you will be able to use to help clear up any questions you might have.