Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog

A nursing home employee has been arrested and charged with theft of medications from nursing home residents. The employee apparently switched prescription pain relievers with over the counter pain relievers and then gave the wrong medication to the nursing home residents. This case shows another example of how medication mixing, giving the wrong medication, and prescription drug theft are more and more common in nursing homes. Family and patient advocates should be sure to check with their loved ones in nursing homes to make sure the resident feels like their medication is working and should also watch how medication is administered.

See the news story here.

Steven Levin of Levin and Perconti has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a Chicago nursing home for the death of a patient who developed pressure sores while under their care. The family chose the facility believing a promise that the staff would provide the best care for the deceased after he had just undergone extensive hip surgery, consequently requiring assistance from the nursing staff with all the tasks of daily living. His limited mobility placed him at risk for the development of pressure sores, and so his recovery depended on staff turning and repositioning him often and making sure that he had adequate nutrition and hydration.

Unfortunately, the care he was given proved to be completely inadequate. On many occasions, he was found in soiled clothing and bedding, was constantly thirsty but his requests for water were ignored. After voicing these concerns to the staff, the man’s wife was told the facility was simply understaffed. Only two weeks into his stay at the facility, he developed pressure sores. Again, when his wife complained to the staff, nothing was done, even though the staff assured her that he would be turned frequently and that he would get a special mattress to keep the pressure off the wound.

Four weeks into his stay, the man’s wife was informed her husband was being taken to a hospital because he was running a high fever. Doctors diagnosed him with a large, deep, and severely infected Stage IV pressure sore on his sacrum and a Stage II pressure sore on his left him and both heels. He was also suffering from sepsis caused by the pressure sores, dehydration, a urinary tract infection and malnutrition. He was never able to recover from these injuries.

Full article

Atria Senior Living is a chain of nursing homes with 130 facilities across the country. The nursing home chain is owned by Lazard Ltd, a corporation that has just given its CEO Bruce Wasserstein a new contract where he will be paid over $41 million for 2007 and over $100 million overall. The staff at Atria Senior Living homes nationwide is underpaid and overworked, just like many assisted living facilities across the country. Employees have reported that the average salary is about $8-10 an hour and that the company-provided healthcare plans are too costly to afford. Nursing home abuse and neglect is a widespread problem in the US and many of these issues are due to understaffing, inadequately trained staff or overworked employees. Nursing homes owned by private equity firms, like Atria Senior Living homes, have even worse statistics. These firms often claim that it is financially too difficult to afford more staff, proper training, or better hours but the case of Mr. Wasserstein is a perfect example of these firms valuing their profits over the wellbeing of residents and employees. The family members of Atria residents are also left perplexed as their loved ones are being neglected and hoping for better care while money that could be used to improve standards of care is going to make millionaires even richer.

Chicago area nursing home Evergreen Park has suspended an employee who has been accused of the sexual abuse of a 53-year-old resident of the facility. Chicago police arrived at the nursing home after being alerted that the nursing home assistant was found kissing a disabled patient on the cheek, as discovered by a fellow nurse. Police arrested the man and he has been charged with misdemeanor battery.

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A new law passed recently makes nursing home and hospital patients with a risk of falling safer. The law acknowledges problems with the handling and care of patients. Many lawsuits each year are brought on behalf of patients who are injured because the higher level of care they required when being transported or lifted was not met. Patients that are at risk are those at facilities that, either because of neglectful practices, staffing issues or lack of appropriate equipment, are unable to provide the care needed. The new law requires health care facilities to purchase equipment designed to aid in the lifting and handling of patients, such as mechanical lifts, as well as solving many issues relating to nursing home and hospital staff. The New Jersey law makes it mandatory for health care workers to be properly trained and also require that there are enough staff members on hand to be able to meet the needs of patients requiring lifting or transportation. Also important is the protection workers are given from being penalized by employers for refusing to handle a patient because of a concern for the patient's or their own safety and wellbeing. Many times, patients require multiple staff members in a patient handling procedure and when there are not enough workers available to help, the resulting safety risks are unacceptable. Hopefully other states, including Illinois, will follow suit.

Heritage Manor Nursing Home in Colfax, Illinois lost a legal battle in a lawsuit where a former employee was awarded $17,000 after reporting sexual assault of an older resident. The whistleblower claims that she was fired after she reported suspicions that sexual abuse of an elderly resident of Heritage Manor was being ignored. The former employee, and widowed mother of nine, was awarded $10,000 in pain and suffering. Heritage Manor, a company based in Bloomington, has been sued in other nursing home abuse and neglect cases.

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Twenty years ago, Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) and it is now time to review its successes and failures in order to improve the quality of nursing home care. OBRA regulates inadequate nursing homes by either shutting them down or allowing well-performing nursing home care providers to take over substandard facilities. However, the system in place requires that those who take over failing homes must be responsible for the liabilities that the previous management had incurred, including fines, penalties and deadlines to correct certain problems, including issues regarding nursing home abuse and neglect. Because the new management must take on these liabilities there are less resources to dedicate to improvement of the quality of care. The American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) has strongly urged congress to pass legislation regarding "the counterproductive nurse aide training lock-out, the need for joint training of nursing home and surveyor staff, allowing states to demonstrate alternative quality assurance systems, facilitating new ownership for chronic problem homes, and using civil money funds to improve nursing home quality."

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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 assistance; not for them to seek ours. This situation needs to be remedied; maybe the simple solution is just to have more staff in the homes to assist.

Click here for the article:

On the front cover of a December issue of the Wall Street Journal read, “POWERFUL ANTIPSYCHOTICS USED TO SUBDUE ELDERLY.” This jest of the article raises the concerns associated with the overuse of drugs for elderly patients to quiet their symptoms and make them less bothersome and more manageable. The Centers for Medicate and Medicaid Services has reported that the abuse is possibly so bad that 21% of nursing home patients who do not have psychosis diagnoses are receiving antipsychotic drugs.

The real question then becomes WHY? The simple answer is that many of these homes and understaffed and overpopulated and a quiet resident is much easier to care for that a demanding one. But residents are crying out for a reason; they are in pain or need something. The answer is not to drug them.

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Nursing homes all over the country are sedating older people by giving them anti-psychotic medication. Federal law prevents nursing homes from improperly sedating patients, but unscrupulous homes use these drugs to do so anyway. You trust your loved ones to a nursing home to take care of them, and instead of giving them the attention and care they need, the home just drugs them up. This is just another example of how nursing homes are understaffed. Fewer people to watch the patients—so just give them a drug. ad things happen when nursing homes are understaffed. If you or your loved one have been injured in a nursing home, please seek legal help.

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One of the most serious issues pressing the nursing home industry today is staffing. Understaffing and high turnover rates often result in a poor quality of care, leading to nursing home abuse and neglect. Often times, turnover rate at a nursing home exceeds 100 percent each year. While nursing homes are working to lower turnover rate, understaffing is an issue that will only increase as the number of individuals residing in nursing homes increases.

For the full article.

As part of KTEN’s series on nursing homes, the station examined the rise of residents in nursing homes. Millions of people are in nursing homes around the country and many people are predicting a sharp increase in that number as the baby boomers continue to age. However, with nursing homes already being short-staffed, many are concerned that nursing home abuse and neglect will rise tremendously with the increase of residents.

For the full article.

The Service Employees Union International (SEIU) will be holding rallies at Chicago-area ManorCare locations on Thursday to draw attention to the company's purchase by private equity company Carlyle Group in August. Further details of the rally will be disclosed tomorrow. Please check back tomorrow for an update.

Click here for more information on Carlyle Group's purchase of ManorCare and it's implications for care at Illinois Nursing Homes.

Re: “At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing” (article, Sept. 23, 2007)

To the Editor:

The abysmal conditions at corporate nursing homes are a case study in what happens when profits are put ahead of human beings.

In a world where Americans' civil rights are increasingly being sacrificed at the altar of big business, Congress must act to protect the vulnerable from abuse. In the case of nursing home residents, Congress could take any number of positive steps. It could, for instance, mandate that potential residents be notified if the facility is in the hands of corporate investors who have shielded themselves from liability. Or, nursing homes could be required to buy insurance that covers lawsuits arising from abuse or neglect.

Specifics aside, Congress must act to protect the most vulnerable members of society. There is simply no excuse — including the “Almighty Dollar” — for the status quo.

Steven M. Levin
Levin & Perconti (Chicago, IL)

A statement was issued by the President of the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care (AQNHC) in response to the New York Times Article released on Sunday in which the AQNHC surprisingly refuses to condemn the practice of providing less than quality care while simultaneously using corporate shells to operate long-term care facilities and avoid accountability. The AQNHC, a group committed to improving the quality of long-term care nationwide, takes the unsupported position that care in America’s nursing homes is improving overall, noting that the New York Times focused their analysis on only 10% of our nation’s nursing homes.

The AQNHC does not deny that care is being sacrificed at these private equity owned homes, nor do they condemn this practice. Further, AQNHC is non-responsive to the issue of accountability where the owners of long-term care facilities - those who reap the profits - are not held accountable for bad care.

Is the AQNHC applauding this practice or not responding at all? One would expect an organization that is engaged in improving care in our nation’s nursing homes to condemn a practice by profit seekers who cut resident services and staff, decreasing the overall quality of care provided to residents.

Instead, the AQNHC lauds the profession’s “demonstrated commitment to public data disclosure,” and transparency, asserting that nursing homes make data available for potential residents to assess the quality of the facility. However, AQNHC forgets that long-term care facilities’ receipt of Medicare funds is conditioned upon reporting this data, making such reporting essentially government mandated.

In essence, the AQNHC applauds long-term care facilities who participate in a government mandated regulatory scheme with no regard for the bad care residents suffer when profits are put ahead of people.

Click here for the statement.

Profits come before protecting our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Nursing homes housing our nation’s elderly that are owned by private investment groups often put profits over people in operating their facilities, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The Times piece revealed that since the year 2000, 1200 nursing homes have been purchased by large investment groups. While investors of these private groups have been making millions from operating these nursing homes, resident care has declined. The model these groups have been following – reduce costs, increase profits and quickly sell. The consequences of implementing this model are decreased levels of staff and decreased budgets for supplies, activities and other resident services. Decreases in care and services provided to residents leads to nursing home abuse and neglect, a prevalant problem in our nation's long-term care facilities.

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A central Illinois nursing home, Pleasant Hill Village in Girard, has been fined $25,000 by the Illinois Department of Public Health for the abuse and neglect of residents. Two nurse's aides committed the abuse and could face criminal charges. The abusive acts include punishing residents who acted in ways the aides did not like by taking away residents' belongings and poking them with safety pins.

Click here for the full article