Nancy Barnes: When death comes without dignity    • March 22,
2011 - 3:02 PM   Glenn Howatt, a data editor on our
investigative team, has a rather morbid task: combing through
death certificates. He looks for patterns that might lead to a
story, such as drug overdoses or medical errors. He started to
notice a number of deaths related to falls by patients in
nursing homes, and eventually he decided to count them up. What
he found was startling: more than 1,000 deaths related to falls
in Minnesota nursing homes over the six-year period he analyzed.
That discovery was the genesis for a series of stories, starting
today, exploring why so many people fall to (eventual) death in
these homes. I urge our readers not to look away, despite the
distressing nature of these stories. Nothing is more certain in
life than death; we can only hope that we will be allowed the
gift of dignity. In many of these stories, that is simply not
the case.  As we worked on these stories these last several
months, editors and reporters w