The assisted-living facility in Edina, Minn., where Jean Peters and her siblings moved their mother in 2011, looked lovely. “But then you start uncovering things,” Peters said.
Her mother — Jackie Hourigan, widowed and developing memory problems at 82 — too often was still in bed when her children came to see her midmorning.
“She wasn’t being toileted, so her pants would be soaked,” said Peters, 69, a retired nurse-practitioner in Bloomington, Minn. “They didn’t give her water. They didn’t get her up for meals.” Her mother dwindled to 94 pounds.
Most ominously, Peters said, “we noticed bruises on her arm that we couldn’t account for.” Complaints to administrators — in person, by phone and by email — brought “tons of excuses.”
So Peters bought an inexpensive camera at Best Buy. She and her sisters installed it atop the refrigerator in her mother’s apartment, worrying that the facility might evict her if the staff noticed it.
Monitoring from an app on their phones, the family saw Hourigan going hours without being changed. They saw and heard an aide loudly berating her and handling her roughly as she helped her dress.
They watched as another aide awakened her for breakfast and left the room even though Hourigan was unable to open the heavy apartment door and go to the dining room. “It was traumatic to learn that we were right,” Peters said.
After filing a police report and a lawsuit, and after her mother’s 2014 death, Peters in 2016 helped found Elder Voice Advocates, which lobbied for a state law permitting cameras in residents’ rooms in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. Minnesota passed it in 2019.
Though they remain a contentious subject, cameras in care facilities are gaining ground. By 2020, eight states had joined Minnesota in enacting laws allowing them, according to the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care: Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington.
The legislative pace has picked up since, with nine more states enacting laws: Connecticut, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. Legislation is pending in several others.
California and Maryland have adopted guidelines, not laws. The state governments in New Jersey and Wisconsin will lend cameras to families concerned about loved ones’ safety.
But bills have also gone down to defeat, most recently in Arizona. For the second year, a camera bill passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly but, in March, failed to get a floor vote in the state Senate.
“My temperature is a little high right now,” said state Rep. Quang Nguyen, a Republican who is the bill’s primary sponsor and plans to reintroduce it. He blamed opposition from industry groups, which in Arizona included LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit aging services providers, for the bill’s failure to pass.
The American Health Care Association, whose members are mostly for-profit long-term care providers, doesn’t take a national position on cameras. But its local affiliate also opposed the bill.
“These people voting no should be called out in public and told, ‘You don’t care about the elderly population,’” Nguyen said.
A few camera laws cover only nursing homes, but the majority include assisted-living facilities. Most mandate that the resident (and roommates, if any) provide written consent. Some call for signs alerting staffers and visitors that their interactions may be recorded.
The laws often prohibit tampering with cameras or retaliating against residents who use them.
