Senior living in Arizona: Incidents of residents hurting other residents, staff

Few public records exist that track resident-on-resident harm in Arizona’s senior living industry.

Assisted living facilities, which are state regulated, don’t have to report all resident injuries to their licensing agency, the Arizona Department of Health Services. Nursing homes, which are federally regulated, have to report injuries to the Health Department, but little attention is paid to altercations between residents, which researchers say are often the result of neglect or poor care.

The Arizona Republic built a first-of-its-kind database that chronicles incidents in which residents hurt other residents or staff in senior living facilities across the state.

Reporters requested police call histories from every Arizona nursing home and assisted living facility that serves more than 10 people. Reporters then requested incident reports for those calls stemming from assault, domestic violence, fight, sex offense and abuse calls, including variations of those keywords.

To capture state citations mentioning resident-on-resident harm, The Republic also reviewed hundreds of state inspection reports.

The database reflects incidents The Republic found from either police or state reports that documented alleged or substantiated physical contact between residents or between residents and facility employees. Reporters contacted more than 50 facilities and companies that own these facilities to get their reactions to the incidents included in the database. Only a handful responded.

The database as it appears now is by no means a complete picture of resident-on-resident harm in the state. A facility’s absence from the database does not imply that residents have not hurt each other there.

Some of the 40-plus law enforcement agencies contacted by The Republic have not yet fulfilled requests for information. They include the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, Pima County Sheriff's Department and the Peoria Police Department. Facilities that have more reports than others don't necessarily have more incidents than those with fewer reports; they may call police  more often.

Genders, medical diagnoses and other key information listed in this database are collected from police and state regulatory reports. The Republic recognizes that those authorities do not always log such information correctly.