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Plenty of blame to go around on senior care abuses

The proposed changes to the state’s oversight of Minnesota elder care facilities announced Tuesday by Gov. Mark Dayton and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is a step in the right direction.

The legislation unveiled Tuesday would use nearly $15 million of the state’s surplus to streamline reporting of abuse and neglect, allowing the Office of Health Facility Complaints to analyze incoming complaints to isolate trends or widespread issues.

The proposal is long overdue, and quite frankly, it’s disturbing it took this long. It was newspaper reporting, not lawmakers or state officials who shed light on the rampant senior abuse that was occurring in senior care centers throughout the state. The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a series of articles exposing the maltreatment and the state’s struggles to keep up with the complaints.

A scathing audit last week faulted “deep and pervasive failures” in the state’s regulation for a 50 percent increase in the number of complaints in the last five years.

Republicans were quick to pounce on the Dayton administration for not identifying the crisis and acting fast enough. Dayton himself even accepted blame Tuesday for the regulatory lapses under his administration that allowed maltreatment of some of the state’s most vulnerable seniors.

However, the maltreatment most likely goes back further than the present administration. There is plenty of blame to go around.

Our seniors, living out their last days, deserve better.

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