Residents found in their excrement or on the ground, dehydration, understaffing… Families and staff at the Gracieuse EMS (VD), owned by the French group EMERA, accuse the establishment of mistreatment. In an investigation by the program Mise au Point, they denounce a disastrous race for profits. The institution disputes and claims to respond harmoniously to the needs of residents.
The Gracieuse EMS in Lonay (VD), near Morges, is not an EMS like the others. The admission price is around 12,000 francs per month. It is popular with wealthy people and the upper middle class in French-speaking Switzerland; some even call it “the EMS of big families”. Famous names from cantonal dynasties stay in the hotel residence and in the EMS which form the Gracieuse domain.
The estate, with its breathtaking view of Lake Geneva, is defined as a 4-star residence and EMS, offering impeccable services and quality of care (“excellence, comfort and gourmet cuisine”, boasts the site). The complex includes a SPA area with an indoor swimming pool and even a mini golf green in front of the main entrance.
But far from the commercial brochures and beautiful photos, the documents and the fifteen testimonies collected by Mise Au Point tell another story. Families and staff who have worked in the EMS claim to have witnessed serious dysfunctions in terms of management and care of residents.
“Crisis situation”
In a letter sent to the medical management of La Gracieuse that the editorial staff of Mise au Point obtained, caregivers report a “crisis situation” and warn of “understaffing which does not allow showers to be given and attention of more than a few minutes to residents.
The letter sent during the year 2023 also indicates “increasingly sustained schedules, work stoppages not replaced and mental and physical fatigue”. Result: care for the elderly is lacking. “The transmissions (Editor’s note: the monitoring notebook in which caregivers note everything that concerns the residents) are not made and lead to care not being provided.”
Contacted, the EMS management chose to respond by email. “Not having the letters in question, we cannot provide a precise answer. However, we confirm that the management of the establishment, in collaboration with the care management, ensures that the teams are organized in a harmonious manner in order to meet the needs of our residents”, says the director of the Vaudois EMS.
Residents found in their feces
However, distraught, caregivers took photos to document their working conditions and show us their difficulties. Several photos sent to Mise au Point show residents in their excrement. Others have fallen into their rooms and are lying on the floor. Some got lost in the garbage room due to lack of adequate supervision, according to the former caregivers. “There is so much work. We don’t have time to take care of everyone,” confides a caregiver. This pressure exhausts staff. “We have nightmares about it,” continues this same caregiver.
“We are deeply shocked by the situations described if they were true. We ask you to send us these elements so that we can conduct internal investigations and take corrective and disciplinary measures if necessary,” writes the EMS management.
Resident photo insert
“Institutional mistreatment”?
Sophie Charlat, a former nurse, confirms: “At La Gracieuse, the problem is institutional mistreatment which causes mistreatment of residents and which pushes the staff to the limit. The residents are left to their own devices.” Another caregiver explains that staff sometimes have to lie to families and that management asks them not to say what is happening.
The daughter of a resident who is now deceased claims that her mother was not hydrated properly: “my mother went to the emergency room several times at the hospital and the first observation from the emergency department was: dehydration. ” It also testifies to errors with poorly respected prescriptions or inadequate care. “Her condition deteriorated. Nothing was done. I was the one who had to take her to the emergency room. She didn’t come out.”
The son of a resident, also deceased, asserts in a letter to La Gracieuse that antidepressant-type medications were prescribed to his mother without consultation or request for agreement from the children. Several people on the healthcare team maintain that their working conditions had serious consequences on the health of certain residents. One of them sums it up: “It’s all profit, no human spirit, total negligence.”
EMS management claims to have no knowledge of these complaints and says it is “committed to dialogue and transparency with families. We attach great importance to the testimonies of residents and their loved ones and always remain attentive to them as well. than that of our colleagues”.
Multinational for the elderly
Domaine de la Gracieuse belongs to the EMERA group, a senior multinational, which operates more than a hundred establishments in France, Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg and French-speaking Switzerland, where it has two EMS. The founder of the group Claude Cheton has accumulated a fortune estimated at more than 320 million francs.
In France, according to Mise au Point’s research, a dozen criminal complaints have been filed against the EMERA group for endangering the lives of others, failure to assist a person in danger or mistreatment. The lawyer for several families, Pierre Farges, explains: “Due to a lack of care staff, there are residents who no longer come out of their rooms. We see an exponential deterioration of the resident as soon as they enter an EMERA retirement home.”
According to the lawyer, who calls on other families to come forward, this abuse is systemic. “It is necessarily systemic to the extent that these are groups that are financialized, with a logic of profitability.” Since 2019, two investment funds have acquired a stake in the group.
“We have no comment to make regarding the ongoing legal proceedings, especially abroad,” responds the director of the Vaudois EMS, who is also international operational manager for the entire EMERA group.
Diapers, missing linens and forgotten meals
The Mise au Point program also obtained minutes of management sessions in the Gracieuse EMS. One of them attests to nutritional deficiencies.
A resident was not fed for several days. There were dysfunctions around meals. Mrs. M. did not eat lunch on several occasions and this difficulty was not noticed by our services.” A little further, the director reacts: “It is important to ensure that all residents of the unit care have plenty to eat.”
Families are also surprised by the gap between the promised meals and what is actually served to certain residents. The son of one of them sent photos to the Mise au Point team. “The food is nothing like the advertisements promising gourmet cuisine. The meals are tasteless.”
(Insert meal photos)
Does the EMS save money on the backs of residents and staff? It is impossible to know since the EMERA group, which owns the Vaud establishment, does not publish details of the margins generated by its retirement homes. Several staff members claim to be victims of a race for profitability. “We ration everything: diapers, thickeners for drinks, equipment, every morning there was a shortage of linen,” says Sophie Charlat, a former nurse.
EMS management refutes these testimonies: “We firmly contest these allegations. No rationing policy exists within our establishment. On the contrary, our stocks are abundant and freely accessible to all our employees. They are also replenished to guarantee the quality of care”
Save money
The management minutes show that the question of costs is crucial. In a report, the director “recalls the importance of being vigilant about turnover”. In another minute, he instructs teams in all sectors to “be careful with expenses that are not urgent”.
Despite several reports to management in recent years, the situation has not improved. “If we’re not happy, we walk out the door. Anyone who is disruptive is fired,” says a former nurse. A former human resources employee confirms problematic management: “I saw around twenty employees in distress pass through my office. When I tried to raise awareness about these problems, they fired me.”
“We contest these allegations and refute these accusations which are in contradiction with our policy for handling reports. We take all alerts seriously and act accordingly to resolve the issues raised,” responded EMS management.
Jérôme Galichet
See the report in Mise au Point on June 16, at 8:10 p.m.
