In August, a federal report concluded that nursing home care in America is in dire straits. Most homes, the report found, were dangerously understaffed and that this understaffing was directly linked to widespread suffering and even the death of residents.

And recently, the U.S. General Accounting Office reported to the U.S. Senate that government payments to nursing home owners were ``adequate'' and in some cases ``even generous.''

Despite a steady and dramatic rise in tax dollars going to nursing home corporations (25 percent increase per year during the last decade), five of the seven largest nursing home chains are now in bankruptcy. These findings are just the latest in a series that chronicles an industry wrought with systemic corruption, widespread fraud and substandard care.

So how do Florida's nursing homes compare?

Last year, the University of California, San Francisco released a study that showed Florida homes as the worst offenders when it comes to short-staffing citations. Consequently, we scored worse than the national average in seven of 10 care categories and near the bottom in at least two others. As a state that has the largest percentage of very old residents and one that has become a haven for retirees, we ought to be ashamed.

How many reports do we need? How many hundreds of millions in fines and penalties must be levied? And how many people must needlessly suffer before we accept the fact that warehousing the elderly in nursing homes does not work?

The current system is indeed a mess, but from this mess we have an historic opportunity to recreate a long-term care system that gives families real options while providing better care. We need to shift away from institutional settings as the primary option and toward community-based care systems that work.

We must begin funding and providing incentives for small adult family homes, adult day care, adult respite care, custodial home help and other such proven concepts. These programs have been shown to save taxpayers money and improve care while allowing seniors the opportunity to age with dignity. Sadly, according to a recent report from the University of South Florida, this state ranks almost dead last in providing these types of services for our seniors.

That needs to change.

A special task force has been assembled to study this issue and to make recommendations to the Florida Legislature. Meanwhile, the nursing-home industry has come to the meetings, hat in hand, asking for more taxpayer dollars and for more legal protections from aggrieved families. It is my hope that the task force will resist their pleas. The members should accept their statutory charge and use this opportunity to end the perpetuation of a system that has already failed us.

The nursing home industry, by all accounts, has gotten us into this mess, and we should desperately avoid entrusting them to get us out of it.

Jim Wilkes is a founder of the Tampa-based law firm Wilkes & McHugh P.A. The firm represents nursing-home residents in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas. Wilkes can be reached at 1-800-255-5070.

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