For hours, John Pernorio repeatedly mashed the call button at his bedside in the Heritage Hills nursing home in Rhode Island. A retired truck driver, he had injured his spine in a fall on the job decades earlier and could no longer walk. The antibiotics he was taking made him need to go to the bathroom frequently. But he could get there only if someone helped him into his wheelchair. By the time an aide finally responded, he’d been lying in soiled briefs for hours, he said. It happened time and again. “It was degrading,” said Pernorio, 79. “I spent 21 hours a day in bed.” Payroll records show …
