A monthly series of conversation on healthcare issues
Topic: “How It All Turned Out: The Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly Reform Act of 2014”
Host: Leslie Bruce, Director, Healthcare Leadership and Community Outreach, UC San Diego Extension
Guest: Aaron Byzak, MBA - Founder of Hazel's Army
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Aaron Byzak updates the reforms he initiated to protect the elderly living in Residential Care Facilities. His passion stemmed from fatal injuries that his grandmother had suffered in such a facility. He founded Hazel’s Army, named after this grandmother which became a mighty force in his advocacy efforts.
Twelve of the seventeen bills he’d initiated in the California Legislature became law but more work remains to be done. Byzak talked about what’s next in the campaign to make residential care facilities for the elderly safer and more accountable.
Quotable: “When my grandmother died due to negligence, neglect and abuse at her assisted living facility in 2013, the facility paid a mere $150 penalty. That was the maximum according to California law. They’d have paid more if they’d parked in her handicapped parking spot. Now, thanks to passage of AB 2236, we’re adding a couple of zeros to the fine.”