Local author goes behind scenes at nursing homes

After her father died of Alzheimer's disease, Emerald Coast resident Bobbye Sikes Wicke says, helping old people as an ombudsman seemed like a good thing to do.

Long-term care ombudsmen watch over seniors in nursing homes and assisted living, investigating complaints about food quality, billing practices, unattended illness, illegal eviction and other issues. Now Wicke, who served as an ombudsman from 2002 - 2005, has recounted some of the cases she investigated in her new book, "Ombudsman: What happens in nursing homes?"

The stories Wicke recounts include a 40-something veteran frustrated at being in long-term care with people 20 or more years older; a terminally ill man refusing food or medication; and a man diverting his elderly mother's money to his own benefit. Other cases, Wicke said, may seem minor but don't feel that way to nursing-home residents for whom a frowning, harsh nurse or a cold dinner is a major disruption in their lives.

In some cases, Wicke said, she was able to find a solution, but not always.

"So many of the cases, the investigations, the complaints, turned out to be something that couldn't be fixed because it was things done by family members," Wicke said, or because fixing things required state government to weigh in. "If the mistake comes from a court, or the nursing home is deliberately doing bad things, we really can't get any help ... unless we can tag it as a violation of the Florida statutes. This isn't always possible."

Wicke said one of the reasons she wanted to publicize the federally mandated ombudsman program is that "it's felt rather widely among the ombudsmen that the state would very much like us to go away ... The Agency for Health Care Administration represents the government and the doctors; they're not terribly interested in the individual patients."

The daughter of former Panhandle Congressman and political powerhouse Bob Sikes, Wicke wrote an earlier book, "Justice Denied," about her father's last year and her legal battle with one of her stepmothers over Sikes' estate.

Wicke said she does her own typesetting and cover design, then uploads the books to the Internet printing service Lightning Source. She and her son Ed Wicke market their books through their own Web site, blacknbluepress.info.

"During the '70s, I was a horsebreeder and trainer for a decade," Wicke said. " Black and blue' describes your physical and financial state."