A Missouri newspaper is publishing an in-depth report this week on the health hazards that nursing home patients face in the United States. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, hundreds of elderly nursing home patients die each year from neglect, mostly due to inadequate facility staffing. In the weeklong series, reporters reveal that the government, medical examiners and law enforcers rarely investigate or detect nursing home fatalities attributed to neglect. The newspaper indicates, however, that out of the 500,000 nursing home deaths in 1999, over 4,000 were due to dehydration, starvation or bedsores.

Elderly abuse in nursing homes has been a major concern to public interest groups and organizations in recent months. In March, the General Accounting Office published a report suggesting that many nursing homes fail to report instances of alleged physical and sexual abuse in a timely manner. In February, the Department of Health and Human Services revealed that over ninety percent of America's nursing homes are understaffed.