nursing home abuse

Published on: May 29, 2016

Jurors Award $5.5M to Nursing Home Abuse Plaintiff in Wrongful Death Lawsuit

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 record-setting award in that county, which was based on the fact that her death was reportedly preceded by months of repeated abuse and neglect. The damage award was imposed against both defendants, the nursing home itself and its corporate parent, Life Care Centers of America, Inc. In Florida, there are more than two dozen nursing homes owned by this same corporation, including two in Orlando and one in West Palm Beach.

The press release asserted this was a company that, like so many others, put profits ahead of patient care. There with issues with poor care, gaps in charting and staffing shortages – all of which resulted in a fatal outcome for decedent, plaintiff’s mother. Continue reading →

Published on: May 13, 2016

New Bill Would Ban Anonymous Nursing Home Complaints

By Dean Freeman

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 bill, insists he is advocating for the most vulnerable because he wants to empower investigators to “help them get to the root of the problem.” By requiring people to leave their name and contact information if they wish to have a complaint investigated, Unes believes more legitimate complaints will be make it through the investigative phase. Continue reading →

Published on: April 16, 2016

DOJ: New Elder Justice Task Forces Focus on Nursing Home Abuse

By Dean Freeman

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 Delery, the acting associate attorney general for the initiative, said that while millions of elderly Americans count on nursing homes and staffers to provide adequate care and treat them with dignity – which is a baseline requirement – too many nursing homes are putting profits before people.

Task force members will seek to identify potential problems before they grow into serious issues and also to take to task those facilities who fail in their duties to patients who are elderly, frail and suffering from dementia and other similar conditions. Continue reading →

Published on: March 25, 2016

Lawmakers: Stop Nursing Home Abuse on Social Media

By Dean Freeman

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 in which workers at nursing homes or assisted living facilities covertly shared videos or photos of residents – many with dementia – on social media. At least two cases have occurred since the story was published.

Nearly half of those cases involved a platform called Snapchat, in which the photos or videos appear for only a set amount of short time before they are deleted. But of course, those images and videos can be copied or captured in screen grabs. Nothing on the internet is ever guaranteed to be truly impermanent. Continue reading →

Published on: March 14, 2016

Nursing Home Abuse Captured on Camera

By Dean Freeman

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 her back with her hands and a brush and also pulled her hair. Bruises were reported on the victim’s hands from trying to defend herself.

The accused has denied she struck the patient or pulled her hair, but it may be difficult to deny accusations that are clearly shown on film.

The facility has released a statement calling the incident, “detestable,” adding it was contrary to the facility’s values and “deeply offensive to us as people.” Continue reading →

Published on: March 5, 2016

Pivotal to Nursing Home Abuse Lawsuit: Who Signed?

By Dean Freeman

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 authorized to do so on behalf of the patient, the contract is invalid,. That means plaintiff has the right to sue.

In some cases, if the patient personally signed the contract, was he or she legally fit to do so? Many times, the answer is no, and that too can work in a plaintiff’s favor.

This issue was recently underscored by The New York Times, which highlighted a 2009 case in which a nursing home resident was murdered by her roommate. Her son sought to hold the nursing home accountable for this violent act. Continue reading →

Published on: February 22, 2016

For Dodging Nursing Home Abuse Verdict, Owner to Pay $1.6M

By Dean Freeman

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 earlier judgments against his facility was for $1.21 million, and was to go to three daughters, the surviving family members of a woman who had been abused at his nursing home in Oklahoma. The women had sued the owner for mental and physical abuse.

That abuse, which was captured on video, showed staff at the nursing home stuffing a rubber glove into the elderly woman’s mouth, slapping her about the head and face, forcefully throwing her down on to the bed and hitting her on the chest.

Continue reading →

Published on: January 29, 2016

Sexual Abuse at Nursing Home Costs Operator License

By Dean Freeman

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 aggressor suffer from conditions like dementia, there could be a tendency by staff to brush off the known sexual encounters as two people seeking affection. But we have to be very careful not to make assumptions in these cases because one of the first questions should be: Can a person with limited mental function give consent? Often, the answer is no.

A troubling case out of Washington state shows what can happen when nursing home staff are too quick to dismiss these interactions as consensual. According to news reports, numerous instances of sexual contact between a male dementia patient and several female patients was deemed consensual by the director of nursing, who chose not to report the interactions to either the state or the families. Continue reading →

Published on: November 28, 2015

Study: 10 Percent of Older Americans Are Victims of Abuse

By Dean Freeman

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 self-reported cases. When you consider that many victims suffer from dementia or isolation that makes them prime targets to start, these individuals may not have the ability to report what’s happening to them.

Still, even this estimate underscores how widespread the problem is, and the fact that families must be on alert for potential problems.

Interestingly, although elder abuse has been in existed in some form since the dawn of humanity, it wasn’t described by Western researchers until the early 1970s. In most cases, attempts to define the problem or respond to it have largely been limited because most studies focused on a small number of anecdotes. Even those that attempted to broaden the understanding were mostly flawed epidemiologically. That has started to change in the last decade, and that’s how we have come to this greater understanding about how serious this problem actually is. Continue reading →

Published on: November 25, 2015

Elder Financial Abuse, Exploitation A Real Risk for Nursing Home Patients

By Dean Freeman

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 adults suffered elder financial abuse by a family member. Although close relatives were often the primary perpetrator, paid caregivers were often perpetrators as well.

Older Americans have several factors that make them vulnerable to financial abuse by caregivers, including:

Significant assets (people over 50 control 70 percent of country’s wealth);
Diminished cognitive capacity or vulnerability to use of physical force to gain compliance;
Lack of active family support system to monitor these issues.

Continue reading →