A jury in Colorado has awarded the family of a former patient $5.5 million in damages – which included $5 million in punitive damages – following the death of a patient in 2013, just six months after she was admitted. Attorneys who represented her family announced in a press release the…
Anonymous complaints of nursing home abuse or neglect would be banned under a proposed law being mulled by lawmakers in Illinois. The bill, unsurprisingly supported by nursing home lobbyists, would prohibit anonymity, purportedly to slash the number of false complaints reportedly made to “Harass nursing homes.” Rep. Mike Unes, sponsor of…
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the launch of 10 regional Elder Justice Task Forces, which will coordinate with state and local law enforcement, prosecutors and other agencies to not only provide services to the elderly, but also to take action against facilities that perpetuate nursing home abuse. Stuart…
Federal lawmakers are demanding action from government regulators to curb nursing home abuse and privacy violations of residents caused by degrading and dehumanizing images and videos posted of them on social media by caregivers. Citing a December expose published by non-profit journalism outlet ProPublica, which reported 35 cases since 2012…
A 55-year-old woman has been arrested for abuse of an 89-year-old dementia patient at a nursing home in Minnesota, after the alleged victim’s daughter installed a hidden camera in patient’s room. Investigators say snippets of video from last month showed the staffer hitting the victim in the head and on…
An increasing number of nursing home abuse lawsuits boil down to this single question: Who signed the admissions contract? Specifically at issue is who signed the provision compelling arbitration or agreeing to release the center from liability. The reason this question is central is because if the person who signed was not…
A former nursing home owner is being held personally responsible to pay $1.6 million after a court found he tried to transfer money from the facility’s bank accounts to avoid payment of previous court judgments handed down for abuse of residents. According to media reports of the case, one of the…
It’s something that is difficult to talk about and sometimes not always easy to identify. Sexual abuse in nursing homes can take several forms. It can be the aide who takes inappropriate pictures of a patient while bathing. It could also be another patient. In cases where both victim and…
A review article published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine reveals a deeply troubling statistic: 1 in every 10 older adults is a victim of some form of violence or abuse. Worse, researchers point out, this figure is all but certainly a vast underestimate considering it’s based on…
Elder financial abuse is one of the least-studied aspects of nursing home mistreatment. But it is a major problem that could result in depletion of a lifetime of financial assets and valuable inheritances. One study published in 2010 by the American Journal of Public Health revealed 1 in 20 older…