Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog

The family of an elderly woman who died in hospice care is suing a local nursing home in a nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuit, charging the staff’s nursing home neglect resulted in acute dehydration that crippled the victim. The complaint alleges that the nursing home did not feed or provide enough fluids for the resident, leading to her acute dehydration.

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A lot of our blog posts concentrate on abuse of nursing home residents, but we also realize that nursing home employees must be treated well in order to continue to provide adequate treatment to residents. Nursing home employees should receive equal treatment. A former employee of a Northwest Indiana nursing home facility claims that she was discriminated against and eventually fired because she was pregnant. According to the complaint, she informed her supervisor that she was pregnant in January. A month later, she provided her employer with a letter from her doctor requesting that she avoid heavy lifting and strenuous activities. She was denied accommodation for her medical restrictions.

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A Maine County grand jury indicted a Hampton man on charges that he stole thousands of dollars of his mother’s income while she was in a nursing home. The man charged is alleged to have stolen more than $13,000 between June 2006 and May 2007. Prosecutors allege that the man who held his mother’s power of attorney at the time, took her money for his own use instead of paying his mother’s nursing home bills. The Medicare Fraud Unit, a unit that investigates health-care provider fraud and allegations involving financial exploitation and physical abuse of long-term care residents, is prosecuting the son.

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An Oregon nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuit alleges that staff at a Portland nursing home dropped a 60 year-old resident, breaking her legs. The nursing home staff left the resident to suffer for five days without medical care before she died. Employees at the nursing home tried to fix the problem by giving the resident pain medication and telling her that her memory of being dropped from her wheelchair was just a bad dream. The victim’s children are seeking $3.5 million in the nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuit.

For articles on the nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuit.
KGW News Online

The Oregonian

A nursing home abuse and neglect lawsuit has been filed against a Texas nursing home. The complaint states that the nursing home fails to supervise residents and allows them to fall. This lawsuit comes after a resident died after multiple falls. After the first fall, the nursing home was required to do the following: provide the resident with a bed or wheelchair alarm, provide the resident with well-fitting and skid-proof footwear, and provide physical assistance for the resident during each and every transfer. The nursing home failed to do all of the above in this case of nursing home abuse and neglect.

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Despite Carlyle Group's completion of the Manor Care buyout, the union that represents nursing home employees in Florida is suing, hoping to block the takeover. Manor Care, a chain of nursing homes, was recently bought by a private equity firm, Carlyle Group, for $6.3 billion. The transfer was completed the day after rulings that held up the buyout were dissolved in West Virginia and Michigan. The union, SEIU Healthcare Florida, has been fighting the takeover. There are 29 Manor Care facilities in Florida housing 3700 residents.

The lawsuit was brought about on the grounds that the Carlyle Groups license application was incomplete. Another plaintiff listed in the lawsuit is the son of a Manor Care resident. He recently stated, "I want to make sure Carlyle's takeover won't harm my mother's care." All of the parties are reviewing the lawsuit in this controversial acquisition.

A national private investment firm’s purchase of a nursing home chain is being unnecessarily delayed in West Virginia by a union that’s putting politics before patients, company executives involved in the proposed sale said Thursday.

The Carlyle Group, a corporate buyout firm, plans to acquire HCR Manor Care, the nation’s largest nursing home chain, as part of a $6.3 billion deal.

Carlyle and Manor Care executives said the Service Employees International Union’s “coordinated campaign” to delay the sale is part of a national organizing effort to boost membership and unionize more nursing homes. Manor Care operates seven Heartland nursing homes in West Virginia.

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Senators escalate battle over 'worst' nursing homes list
Nine top U.S. senators have demanded the release of 74 additional names on a government list identifying the country's worst performing nursing homes.

"Providing information about poorly performing nursing homes to the lobbyists who represent those facilities, and not to the senior citizens who would most benefit from this information, is outrageous," said a letter from the lawmakers to Health and Human Service Secretary Michael Leavitt, who oversees the agency holding the list.

All of the homes on the list of 128 have repeatedly violated government regulations, earning them "special focus facilities" designation by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The publicly released version of the list last week contained the names of only the 54 worst nursing homes. The full list, which was given to state health departments and industry lobbyists at the American Health Care Association, has 128 names.

"Our goal in releasing the list of facilities to the nursing home trade groups was to challenge them to police themselves, not as lobbyists, but in their role as technical advisers to their members. We view these groups as part of the chain of accountability for poor-performing nursing homes," said CMS spokeswoman Mary Kahn.

The senators' letter also asked for federal guidance to state health departments about releasing names on the list. Some states have made in-state names public while others have said they were not allowed to.

The fight for public access to the names of the nation's worst nursing homes escalated Thursday with nine U.S. senators demanding that a federal agency immediately take steps to identify the facilities.

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has compiled a list of nursing homes that have repeatedly fallen in and out of compliance with government health and safety regulations and caused harm to their residents. Those homes are not subject to more frequent inspections.

Two weeks ago, the agency issued what it called a "public list" of the homes, which identified 54 so-called "special-focus facilities." But, as The Des Moines Register reported, the full list is believed to include the names of 128 homes and was recently given to industry lobbyists at the American Health Care Association.

Last week, Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama called on the federal agency to make public the full list of facilities. On Wednesday, Obama and eight other senators signed a letter reiterating that demand and sent it to Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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Four Iowa nursing homes have been designated as "special-focus facilities" by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services because of their alleged history of violating government health and safety standards for care centers.

One of the nursing homes, Blair House in Burlington, has had only a few minor violations in its five-month history and is on the government list because a different care center at the same location had its license revoked by the state.

Here's a look at the three newly identified special-focus facilities in Iowa:

The Abington on Grand, Ames: This care center has a long history of problems dating back at least six years.

In 2002, a worker barricaded a female resident in her room by moving furniture against the doors to block her exit.

At the time, the home was also cited for failing to provide residents with adequate nutrition. As inspectors watched, one resident who needed feeding assistance sat at a dining table and called out, "What do I do now? Can someone put sugar on my cereal? Can someone please help me?"

One worker tried to block an inspector's entrance to a kitchen area, saying, "You can't come in yet." The inspector found dead mice on the floor where melons had been stored.

In 2004 and 2005, the home was placed on the state's own list of the worst care facilities in Iowa.

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The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare has revoked the license of the Gooding Rehabilitation and Living Center, nearly one month after a resident committed suicide on Nov. 11 and one week after the center was placed on a national list of underperforming nursing homes.

In a letter to the center dated Wednesday, Randy May, deputy administrator of the department's Division of Medicaid, said department staff determined that steps proposed by the nursing home on Nov. 16 removed the immediate danger to its residents. But problems still remained, the letter said, and citing a "history of serious deficiencies," the department decided there was no other alternative to pulling the center's state license.

The center's administrator now has 28 days to file an appeal with the state requesting an administrative review of the report, Health and Welfare spokeswoman Emily Simnitt said. If no appeal is filed by that date, the 80-bed center will be forced to close, requiring its residents to move.

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In a decision that marks a new era in nursing-home ownership in Wisconsin, a license was approved Thursday to a private equity company to run eight Manorcare facilities statewide.

A spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Family Services said the one-year probationary license will take effect after Manor Care notifies the department that its ownership transfer deal has closed with Carlyle Group, one of the nation's largest private equity companies.

Rick Rump, assistant vice president of corporate communications for Manor Care headquarters in Toledo, Ohio, said he expects the transaction to be closed by the end of the year. The transaction includes similar pending buyouts in other states.

Five of the eight Manor Care facilities are located in Northeastern Wisconsin, with two in Green Bay.

The decision comes three days after two of the state's biggest lobbying groups testified during a public hearing at the State Capitol against the $6 billion buyout.

Their main concerns were whether the corporate structure would be so complex that patients would have difficulty bringing lawsuits against the company for negligent injury or wrongful death, and whether ownership changes would result in declining quality of care.

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It is a central healthcare issue that should be on everyone’s agenda. Who will care for the baby boomers as they get older and who will train those individuals?

This issue has begun to be addressed in Virginia under the head of the Older Dominion Project – a community initiative aimed at helping its aging residents. According to a recent study, the current population of Virginians 65 and older is about 700,000. This number is expect to double in the next 20 years. Is the same nationwide? Please offer insight as a crucial part of our population continues to grow.

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The family of an Arkansas woman has filed a nursing home negligence lawsuit against after the woman died from complications regarding a gastronomy tube. The woman was admitted to the nursing home and needed a g-tube to ensure that she got enough nutrition. A g-tube is connected through the stomach through an incision in the abdomen. After several months, staff at the Arkansas nursing home noticed that the woman’s g-tube was missing. They inserted a second tube, assuming that the first one had fallen out. However, no one ever tried to find out where the g-tube went. If they had done a search, they would have discovered that the tube had been pulled into the woman's stomach. Because the doctor's failed to remove the first g-tube, the woman continued to get ill and eventually died.

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Hospital, nursing home, and medication error studies have shown that medical errors have contributed to the deaths of 600,000 hospitalized patients since 2002. This 2004 study also concluded that many proposed methods of nursing home and medication error prevention will not successfully prevent injuries and deaths from medical errors.
The Food and Drug Administration has reviewed a number of its policies in order to identify how labeling and dispensing could lead to medication error. The FDA found that there are 51.5 million medication errors committed annually, with more than three million of them potentially life threatening.

A recent congressional report states that one third of all nursing homes in the United States have been cited for abuse.
This report also indicates that from 1996 to 2000 the number of nursing homes cited had doubled.

To view this entire article:
http://www.onlinelawyersource.com/news/nursing-homes-cited.html

New York state investigators have been using hidden video cameras to investigate allegations of neglect and abuse at nursing homes in the state, and the cameras are revealing significant instances of such criminal behavior on the part of staff and caregivers.

To view this entire article:
http://www.onlinelawyersource.com/news/ny-nursing-homes.html

The California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform have a comprehensive checklist and tips for choosing a nursing home.

To view the California Advocates for Nursing Home Tips:
http://www.nursinghomeguide.org/NHG/nhg_txt_howtochoose.lasso

California has begun to realize the importance of a more strict review of special care homes. The substance of a unanimous decision of board members in Santa Barbara County has indicated that all special care homes disbursed throughout residential areas will receive greater review to be sure they are meeting required guidelines. The homes classified as “special care homes: range from drug-rehabilitation houses all the way to homes caring for Alzheimer’s patients. It is certainly great to see individuals recognizing the need to further review of homes caring for residents requiring great supervision.

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A November 2007 issue of the Clinical Advisor has cautioned all nursing home residents and their families about the scarce number of doctors to look after the residents. It has been admitted by anonymous physicians in the nursing industry that it is virtually impossible for them to have time to review every patient’s entire chart and that they rely on patient’s to give them an accurate history. I was under the belief that we go to doctors to seek their assis