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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.

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The state attorney general in Pennsylvania has the right to pursue legal action against a number of nursing homes under consumer protection provisions for low staffing levels. 

Nursing homes targeted by the action had argued the attorney general couldn’t do this because:

  • Only the state Department of Health had the authority to investigate or pursue litigation regarding staffing levels;
  • Her office had hired a private law firm to conduct the investigation – a law firm that had contributed money to the attorney general’s campaign finances.

But now, a seven-judge panel has ruled in favor of Attorney General Kathleen Kane. The judges stated that while it was true the DOH has the authority to enforce regulations and set minimum standards for staffing levels at skilled nursing facilities, they weren’t the only agency with the authority to investigate. While the DOH may be concerned with such matters as it relates to the health, safety and adequacy of each facility, it has no authority or capacity to investigate or correct the consumer marketing or billing practices of these facilities. That is properly within the realm of the state attorney general.  Continue reading →

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The largest nursing home rehabilitation therapy provider in the nation has agreed to a $125 million settlement after federal prosecutors accused the firm of submitting phony Medicare claims. 

RehabCare, a subsidiary of Kindred Healthcare Inc., Kentucky-based company, and operators of four facilities, allegedly submitted claims for Medicare service bills that were either not reasonable, not necessary or that simply never occurred.

Why does this matter to patients in nursing homes? First, this is far from an isolated incident. Secondly, when a nursing home or other care facility is more interested in stacking its dollars than in making sure its patients get the right level of care based on their individual needs, patients are at risk for illness, injury and even death. Continue reading →

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The 73-year-old man from Detroit was mentally impaired, struggling with dementia. He was also physically impaired, and needed a wheelchair to move around. These were the reasons why he was living in a Michigan nursing home in the first place. 

Then, last month, the man reportedly wheeled himself out of the facility. No one stopped him. No one caught him. The following day, construction workers found him dead inside a Dumpster.

Now, just a few weeks have passed and his family has filed a lawsuit against the facility, alleging negligence proximately resulting in the man’s death. They probably have a strong case. Continue reading →

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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 →

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It was Christmas Day, and the just-turned-21-year-old nursing assistant, who had just received her professional license, was working yet another shift at the nursing home because the facility was short-staffed. She’d already worked Christmas Eve, but agreed to work Christmas Day too. When she got there at 7 a.m., she was asked to work a double shift, until 11 p.m. 

Initially, she said she would. Such occurrences had been common at the facility since a for-profit company took over the once family-owned facility in Massachusetts. But then, something terrible happened.

She placed an 83-year-old patient into a mechanical lift to move her. But she didn’t have another staffer to assist her, as is required by policy and the machine’s manual. Her placement was improper, and the elderly woman fell to the floor. Both her legs were broken, though that was not immediately known. Ultimately, that injury would lead to the woman’s death two days later.  Continue reading →

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A state government report in Minnesota revealed that drug theft by health care workers is so common there, it accounts for 20 percent of all abuse cases involving elderly patients.

The state department of health conducts regular analysis on exploitation and abuse of vulnerable, elderly residents, but this is the first time officials conducted a simultaneous analysis of so-called drug diversion incidents. From June 2013 to June 2014, researchers tallied 192 allegations of nursing home drug theft. Of those, there was proof to substantiate 27 of those incidents allegedly carried out by 14 staffers.

In a large percentage of cases, workers in nursing homes swapped over-the-counter pills for patients’ Vicodin or oxycodone. In another incident, a worker who was off-duty one day entered the facility, went to a patient’s room, lifted the bed sheet and peeled off the patient’s pain medicine patch right from his back before leaving the facility. That incident was later reported to police.  Continue reading →

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At first, it seemed like it might be an isolated incident. Nursing home workers were caught posting images or videos of elderly patients that were embarrassing, humiliating and even dehumanizing.

These were clear violations of patients’ dignity, privacy and also in some cases, of the law.

Today, journalism non-profit ProPublica reports there have been nearly three dozen of these incidents across the U.S. in just the last two years. These workers are sharing video clips and image files of residents, in many cases where they are partially unclothed or totally naked. Continue reading →

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People who suffer from obesity grapple with a range of health problems, from diabetes to congestive heart failure.

The number of ailments facing obese adults increase as they age. This has resulted in serious problems at nursing homes throughout the country, where Medicare often refuses to pay more for the specialized care needed for adequate care of obese patients. Kaiser Health News reports this has caused some nursing homes to routinely turn down hospital referrals for overweight patients, but there are concerns this practice violates federal anti-discrimination laws.

A number of hospitals have stepped in to help ease the transition by offering donations of specialized lifts, mattresses and beds. While there is much focus on society-at-large to get fit and lose weight, doctors say there is a segment of the population for which this is not realistic or even advisable. That does not mean they forfeit their right to adequate care. Continue reading →

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As we age or develop certain health conditions, our dietary needs are likely to change. One of the most fundamental of these relates to the ability to safely swallow larger pieces of food.

According to Injury Facts 2015, choking is the No. 4 cause of unintentional injury deaths in 2011, right after falls, motor vehicle crashes and poisonings. Although choking is a risk for people of all ages, the number of these deaths peaked at age 84.

Although there are many items that could be cited in choking incidents (for children, it’s often toys or other basic household items), for the elderly, it most often tends to be food items. The CDC reports there are more than 460 choking deaths related to food among people over the age of 65 in a single year. Continue reading →

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