Problems with Home Health Aides

By Ted Hart, WBNS

November 13, 2006

The state spends close to $250 million a year on home health aides. Home health aides provide in-home care for the elderly and disabled by cooking meals and helping to bathe and groom them, but 10 Investigates found Ohio's system of home health aides is filled with hundreds of examples of fraud and abuse.

Because of his cerebral palsy, Neil Decker relies on home health aides. He says over the years he's had some good aides and some bad. The worst, he says, was Debbie Fleming.

"She put me through hell just neglecting her job," says Decker.

Fleming had a prior felony conviction for theft which should have prevented her from ever getting the job, but the conviction didn't show up on her background check. Decker says Fleming started using his credit card and not paying him back. Then she started billing Medicaid for hours she didn't work.

Decker finally reported Fleming and she was convicted of Medicaid fraud. Decker is not alone in his struggle to find good help. 

"I could name off at least, about four that I was suspicious of," Hattie Heller says.

Heller's son Breaker was left paralyzed after a car accident 10 years ago. He died this past summer from an overdose of crack cocaine.

Heller says, "So he had no use of his hands, so if he was smoking crack cocaine"

Some family members and neighbors say one of Breaker's home health aides helped him smoke crack.

Neighbor Shirley Bryant says, "I was going past his door, his door was open, she was actually standing in there holding a crack stem in his mouth."

The aide declined an on-camera interview and denies any wrongdoing, but the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which oversees home health aides, is in the process of firing her.  They say she failed to report finding a broken crack pipe in Heller's bed and that she withheld information and failed to submit proof that she was not using illegal drugs herself.

In fact, 10 Investigates found that three years ago, the aide was arrested for possession of a crack pipe. She later pled guilty to disorderly conduct.

Breaker Heller's family thinks the problem goes a lot deeper than one aide.

"I think the system is all messed up," Hattie Heller says.

Breaker's stepfather Robin Moorehead says the aides come and go like it's a temporary employment agency.

There are more than 19,000 consumers with home health aides. Reviewing state records, 10 Investigates found proven complaints against 345 home health aides in one year. Complaints range from sleeping on the job and theft to abuse and neglect.

ODJFS says they do follow up on all complaints and they're restricted by state statute as to how far they can go with a background check.

Tracy Williams with ODJFS says, "I think we're certainly doing the best we can to be accountable and to run a program that meets the standards that are expected."

Consumers can always call and complain about their home health aide and that will trigger an investigation, but state inspectors do not, normally, make unannounced visits.