For years, I have been trying to become a vendor with the retirement homes in the area. What has stopped me from being able to do that?

Fears of liability by the assisted living facilities.

Once I got a call from out-of-state from a gentleman whose elderly father was here in a large rehabilitation facility. He wanted massage services for his father. I did the contact with the home and picked up the paperwork they wanted me to sign.

When I returned to my car, I opened and read the paperwork. I laughed. Here was another institution that was ignorant or thought that I was.

What the homes all insist on is that my relationship with my client in their home is strictly between the client and me and doesn’t involve the home. These are the basic retirement home issues. If you think about it for a moment that is foolish on the face of it. I or my people would be working with the client on the facility’s property, with their staff, and under their rules.  They also should be inviting us to share, with the client’s permission, what we find so that the home can assist the client in our absence.  If they assisted our work, we would not have to address the same issues every time we came to see the client.

This institution was very confused. It had a contract meant for attendants and employees of their clients. I am neither an attendant nor an employee. But, the real joke was that though they say they want nothing to do with that relationship between me and my client, they have a whole contract defining the relationship and expect me to sign it.  Either they have a relationship with me or they don’t.

Talk about having your cake and eating it, too. Retirement homes can’t have rules for a relationship they say they want no part of. It is a ploy to try to shed any liability, but it doesn’t work. Either they are a part of the relationship, or they are not. It can’t be both ways. And as long as we work on their property, they have to be a part of the equation, like it or not.

This home also wanted me to sign a waiver of liability, which probably wouldn’t hold up in court. I carry more liability insurance than most mobile therapists, but that doesn’t mean that I am letting them out of their liability. I got the extra coverage to protect myself and the institutions I serve.

In San Diego, some legal hoops are being jumped to see that the homes in California even have liability insurance. For more on that story see http://www.send2press.com/newswire/Consumer-Advocates-for-RCFE-Reform-CARR-Sponsors-California-RCFE-Liability-Insurance-Legislation_2014-01-0113-006.shtml. Apparently, many homes for some inexplicable reason have no insurance of their own.

So, beware of the tricks employed in attempts to at least make you think that you will be left with all the liability. I don’t know if the homes just don’t have attorneys or if their HR departments think they can just whip up contracts that make no sense or what exactly is going on. Protect yourself.