BUFFALO, N.Y. — The death of 87-year-old Williams Strasner raised a lot of questions about the quality of care at Emerald South Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, especially since this is the second violent death at the facility in as many years.
"That there was another incident, is not surprising," Todd Hobler tells 2 On Your Side. He is the Vice President of 1199, the union that represents a number of the healthcare workers at Emerald South.
"The long and short of it all is that there's routinely insufficient staff to provide the care that the residents need," Hobler added.
Strasner tried to escape his room early Monday morning, tying together clothes and bed sheets, which he attempted to use to climb down from his third-floor window. He fell 34 feet to the ground.
Buffalo Police spokesperson, Capt. Jeff Rinaldo told reporters that Strasner laid there in the parking lot for approximately 20 minutes before someone found him and called 911. He died on the way to the hospital.
2 On Your Side reached out to Buffalo Police again Wednesday for an update to the investigation, but we're told there is nothing new to report. At Monday's press conference Rinaldo said investigators are looking into how staffing may have allowed this tragedy to take place They're also trying to find out how Strasner managed to get past the security feature on the window.
A spokesperson for Emerald South tells 2 On Your Side Strasner had never tried to escape before, and they had no records of complaints from him.
Police say he doesn't have any family that we could reach out to locally.
Hobler says this is typical of patients in inner city nursing homes, "A lot of them don't have advocates. They wind up there because are poor, and they're paid for by Medicaid. This is where a lot of the major problems we see...the emeralds are almost entirely Medicaid residents, right? and then these guys from out of town come in and they try to make a buck on relatively low Medicaid reimbursement rates. And the only way to do that is to cut staff, cut wages and benefits, and it's a recipe for a disaster."
The New York State Department of Health, which oversees nursing homes, declined our interview request stating "The Department's investigation is ongoing, we cannot comment further."
Hobler says the state needs to make changes to protect nursing home residents, starting with regulations requiring specific staffing rules for long term care facilities like Emerald South, "The state has very vague guidelines. It's ambiguous phrasing to say, you have to have 'adequate' staff to provide care.
"We've gone to the state and said you need to do more. And they are quite honestly not up to the task, because the whole system needs to be reworked. If there's no change in state regulation of nursing homes. If there aren't better guidelines, if there aren't staffing guidelines, if there aren't better quality measures...more incidents like this are going to happen."
Although Strasner did not have family members we could reach out to 2 On Your Side did find out that he was assigned a case-worker with Adult Protective Services.
We called her a number of times today, but we're still waiting for a response.
We also reached out to her supervisor, as well as Tim Hogues, the Erie County Commissioner of Senior Services. We're still waiting to hear from them, as well.