Articles Posted in nursing home abuse

Sadly, Florida nursing home abuse and neglect is on the rise. If you suspect that your loved one is being abused in a nursing facility, or if they or another resident complains of mistreatment, do not hesitate to notify the authorities. It is against the law for anyone to abuse or neglect residents, whether staff, volunteers, family members and guardians or other residents of the nursing home.

But do you know how to identify or report nursing home abuse? Our Broward nursing home abuse attorneysknow that, armed with the proper knowledge and information, friends and families of nursing home residents can understand the warning signs of abuse and take the necessary actions to stop their loved ones and other residents from being abused or neglected. If a nursing home resident’s rights are violated, the resident or the resident’s family or guardian may bring a claim for damages under Florida law.

Nursing homes get more visitors during the holidays than any other time of the year.

For many elderly or infirm residents, speaking up about abuse and neglect is embarrassing. For others, it is impossible. In the U.S. alone, more than half a million reports of abuse against elderly Americans reach authorities every year, and millions more cases go unreported. By being able to identify the warning signs of neglect, you may help to protect your loved ones from needless suffering.
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The power to prevent the flu and other dangerous sicknesses is in your hands. Believe it or not, but TB, Pneumoccous, Streptococcus, Coxsackie virus, pneumonia, bronchiolitis, bronchitis, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, conjunctivitis, the common cold, the flu and flu-like illnesses can be prevented simply by washing hands. And that’s precisely the message of National Handwashing Awareness Week.

Those who work in a nursing home are required to wash their hands at the beginning of the shift, at the end of their shift, before and after direct contact with many residents, as well as before handling personal hygiene duties and before and after handling medical devices like catheters, bed dressings or blood samples. These are not only common-sense habits; they’re prescribed by guidelines from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, part of the process by which the nation’s nursing homes are inspected and certified.

Our nursing home abuse attorneysin Broward understand the faith many families in the area put in nursing homes they chose for their loved ones. It’s critical that we know that our elderly loved ones are safe, they’re protected and that they’re working with the most cautious and careful staff. One of the most important of the handwashing tips that we can offer involve the T Zone. This is the area that is comprised of your mucous membranes of your eyes, nose and mouth. It’s critical that hands are washed after touching these areas. Believe it or not, but if you were to never touch those mucous membranes with a dirty (contaminated) finger you would never get sick again from a respiratory or gastro-intestinal illness.
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Discovering that an elderly loved one was neglected, injured, or even worse, abused by those in charge of their care can be devastating for families. When a family suspects that their elderly parent, aunt or uncle, grandparent or other loved one has been abused, it is common that they go to the authorities. Recent reports indicate that despite many reports of abuse, local and state agencies do not have the capacity to deal with the rising number of allegations involving nursing homes. Knowing that the system has become incapable of managing the number of complaints, many victims’ families have had to pursue other options, including legal recourse.

Nursing home abuse and negligence complaints are on the rise in Florida and nationwide. Our Fort Lauderdale nursing home abuse attorneys are dedicated to providing comprehensive advocacy on behalf of victims and their families. In the event of a nursing home injury or death, there could be another of responsible individuals and entities. Nursing homes may be responsible for not screening employees and individual caretakers could be liable for negligence. We are dedicated to investigating nursing home abuse or injury cases on behalf of our clients and their loved ones.
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When we send our loved ones to receive care in a nursing home facility, we expect them to be treated with kindness, dignity and respect.

Too often, that doesn’t happen. In fact, a recent national report by USA Today reveals that many patients at nursing home across the country are being robbed of their trust fund accounts, funds that are overseen by nursing home staffers. Our Coconut Creek nursing home abuse lawyers have learned that in some cases, these thefts have exceeded $100,000.

This kind of financial abuse is all the more egregious when you consider that despite the term “trust fund,” these savings were often accumulated by the elderly themselves, through decades of hard work and sacrifice. To be raided without a second thought by those who are supposed to be ensuring quality care is despicable.
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When young people die, there is almost always some type of investigation, some burning drive to find a definitive answer – even when there is nothing sinister about it.

However, our nursing home abuse lawyers in Port St. Lucie know the opposite is true for our elderly. Even in cases where there may be some suspicious circumstances surrounding the person’s passing, there is a general assumption that when an elderly person dies, it was simply his or her time. It’s especially easy to do this when the person suffered from debilitating health issues or conditions that are known to eventually prove fatal.

Unfortunately, these kind of assumptions result in the possibility that cases of serious neglect or abuse may be overlooked. It also allows the possibility that criminal actions may go unpunished – or worse, repeated.
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The hope for each of us is to live a long life and that, in our last years, we will be treated with compassion, dignity and respect.

Sadly, our Royal Palm Beach nursing home abuse lawyers know that is too often not the case. In those instances, it seems clear that someone – or many people, perhaps – should be held accountable.

Recently, a non-profit journalism center’s in-depth investigation into the death of a 95-year-old California woman again illustrates that we can’t always count on state or federal authorities to act when our elderly loved ones have been mistreated.
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The state-funded agency charged with keeping tabs on Florida nursing home abuse claims has become a lightning rod for controversy.

It’s top ombudsman, Jim Crotchet, was abruptly placed on paid leave, ordered to have zero contact with agency workers or volunteers and essentially confined to house arrest while the state investigates some mysterious alleged wrongdoing, the nature of which has yet to be disclosed.

You may recall that Crotchet was the controversial replacement pick of Gov. Rick Scott, who ousted former ombudsman Brian Lee after Lee requested information on funding sources from thousands of nursing home providers across the state. That request didn’t sit well with the powerful lobbyist arm of the nursing home industry, who pushed hard for Lee’s ouster. They got it. Crotchet was seen as more industry-friendly, which of course raised numerous red flags for nursing home resident advocates.

Lee went on to found the non-profit elder care advocacy group Families for Better Care, and has an employment lawsuit still pending against the state.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Elder Affairs, which oversees the ombudsman program, said the program “continues to thrive,” despite these issues. She said the biggest problem has been the negative press, which she said have reflected a “gross misrepresentation” of what’s really going on with the agency.

But while the agency may tap-dance around personnel issues, it’s not so easy to sidestep the sorry state in which many nursing home residents have been discovered in recent months.

For example, at a for-profit elder care facility in Orlando, an elderly patient was found to have sexually molested at least four female patients on numerous occasions. He even reportedly groped a female employee. He was also accused of repeatedly urinating in the hallway. However, the facility was alleged to have done little to stop him.

Then in Melbourne, a nursing home had reportedly taken a number of residents on an outing when a female patient fell from her wheelchair, suffering a head wound. However, rather than call 911, the staffer did nothing. Over the course of two hours, the woman developed a softball-sized bump on her head. Two hours later, when she was transported to the hospital, she required emergency surgery to address the swelling. She did not survive.

And in June, an elder care facility in Winter Haven was fined some $17,000 by the state after employees there acted to resuscitate two patients – one of those a 102-year-old – even though they had signed legal documents expressly refusing intubation for purposes of extending their lives. Such actions violate the rights of residents to have a death that is both peaceful and dignified.

Our Delray Beach nursing home abuse lawyers wish we could say that such incidents are isolated. However, nearly one in five nursing homes here in Florida is listed on the state watch list for doling out poor care.

At this time, when we need the ombudsman program more than ever, we are finding it is crumbling. Established by the federal Older Americans Act, its purpose is to serve as a safety net for residents of nursing homes, who are vulnerable and often lack the ability to advocate for themselves.
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State workers were found responsible for egregious and sometimes violent abuses of their position.

One bit a patient on the ear. Another threatened a co-worker with a text that contained the words, “gut you like a fish.” Another left a patient unclothed, bleeding from a head injury and soaked in feces on the bathroom floor. And still another was found to have struck a resident in the head, knocked him out of his chair and squirted water in his face.

Our Lake Worth nursing home abuse attorneys understand that each of these workers were responsible for caring for individuals who suffer mental or developmental disabilities. All were found in internal investigations to have been wrong. All of them, according to The New York Times, kept their jobs.
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The woman in Room 101 was dying.

That might not have been so unique for someone residing in an assisted-living facility, designed for those who require help with day-to-day tasks, but not necessarily around-the-clock medical care.

But it was why she was dying that would later become an issue. As our Vero Beach nursing home abuse lawyers understand, the retired teacher’s body was being ravaged by bed sores, also known as pressure ulcers. In all, she had five. One at the base of her spine had become so deep, so infected and gangrenous, that required surgery.

As journalism non-profit ProPublica would later report, a wound care expert opinioned that she was battling numerous strains of bacteria from the gaping wounds in her flesh, and that it had likely been several months since she had been treated.

She was also suffering from severe malnutrition.

In and of itself, this standard of care is appalling. What is even more troubling is that in California, where the patient in Room 101 resided, the law states that someone with pressure sores be moved to a facility more equipped to handle that intensive level of care, either a hospital or 24-hour nursing home facility.

The patient in Room 101 died. The center responsible for her care was fined for failing to move her to a more appropriate facility.

But why wouldn’t they have done so in the first place?

In a word: money.

In this case, the assisted living facility had been paid some $12,000 to cover the patient’s room, meals and care for just three months. Aides at the facility would later reveal that they clandestinely rubbed cream into the wounds to help ease the pain. This was despite the fact that they were not medically trained or authorized to do so. However, they felt it was the least they could do when the hire-ups had directives to retain patients as long as possible – regardless of the patient’s condition.

An internal memo discovered from 2008 at the facility discussed the “back door” priority. That is, they wanted paying customers who moved in to never move out, or in other words, “go out the back door.” One directive even indicated in all-caps: “KEEP THE BACK DOOR SHUT!”

Of course, those who might exit out that “back door” would be those who required an increased level of care than what the facility could provide. This bolsters the occupancy numbers and ultimately the pocketbooks of the facility, but at the cost of jeopardizing the health and well-being of the patient.

ProPublica recently teamed up with reporters from PBS Frontline to sift through thousands of pages of regulatory documents from this same company in seven states, including Florida. What they found was that in the last six years, the company has been cited in every state for for holding on to residents who should have been relocated to receive a higher level of care.
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The question of whether elderly patients with dementia may be able to engage in consensual sex is an uncomfortable one for the children and grandchildren of those in question.

However, our Hollywood nursing home abuse lawyers view it as an important one to address in order to ensure their loved one’s safety and well-being.

On the one hand, we want our loved one’s final years to happy. Although it might be difficult notion at least initially – especially families of dementia patients who are still married – many come to the conclusion that this might mean offering a blessing to a romantic relationship with another patient.

On the other hand, such relationships are fraught with questions that are not only ethical and moral, but also regarding safety. The biggest underlying question is: To what extent can a dementia patient offer consent to a sexual relationship? We would never want to expose our loved ones to a situation in which they may in any way be coerced into a sexual relationship. But where do we draw the line?

There is no surefire formula, but there seems to be consensus that there is indeed a point at which a patient is too far gone mentally to reasonably offer consent. Determining what that point is, though, is not easy.

A recent series by Bloomberg News Reporter Bryan Gruley explored this topic in-depth.

The series opens with a call received by an Iowa nursing home director on Christmas Day four years ago. Staffers had discovered that a 78-year-old man and an 87-year-old woman had just engaged in intercourse. The man, a retired college professor, was divorced. The woman, a former secretary, was still married. Both had dementia.

Both the director and a top administrator at the center were fired. The assertion from the woman’s family members was that she was not in a position mentally to offer consent and that the facility failed to protect her from the man’s sexual advances.

We know that the craving for human touch doesn’t vanish once we reach a certain age. A New England Journal of Medicine Study published in 2007 found that more than half of respondents between the ages of 65 and 74 reported continuing to engage in sexual contact, as did nearly a third of those between the ages of 75 and 85.

It’s possible we could see those percentages grow as baby boomers, those who lived in a sexually-freer generation, continue to age.

This might be an uncomfortable fact for younger folks, but it’s important to understanding the greater issue.

In the Iowa case, the fact that a sexual relationship unfurled wasn’t entirely surprising. The two had reportedly “gravitated” toward one another, holding hands and spending long hours sitting close and talking. Staffers said the woman appeared “calmed” by the man’s presence. However, she referred to the man by her husband’s name, calling into question her mental capacity to consent. There was little question that the woman’s dementia was more severe than the man’s, but the question was whether that meant that the two couldn’t engage in a consensual relationship.

Initially, when nursing home staffers learned that the two were becoming friendly, they tried to dissuade the man from spending time with the woman, concerned about liability. Although there wasn’t any indication of force in these encounters, administrators initiated 15-minute checks on him to ensure he wasn’t being “overly-friendly” with the woman. However, a lack of staff meant that those checks couldn’t continue.

While sexual encounters between staffers and patients is expressly against the law, there is no law barring sex between residents. However, sex without consent is rape. This would be something that administrators would have to report to state regulators. But what if it appears consensual?

Many facilities believe that, generally, residents should have the right to engage in activities they would normally be able to engage in outside the facility, so long as it doesn’t infringe upon the safety or rights of others or themselves.

It’s important that nursing home administrators are protecting patients at all junctures. That means that such relationships must be closely monitored, and facilities must be openly and regularly engaging family members in the discussion is well.
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