Incidents

Nursing Home Workers Post Video Taunting A Dementia Resident

Published on: August 12, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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Video of Dementia Resident Taunted by Nursing Home Caregivers Was Shared on Social Media

Levin & Perconti is representing the family of a 91-year-old woman after two of her care aides, formerly employed by Abington of Glenview Nursing Home in Glenview, violated the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act and state privacy laws through abuse and the use of social media. The workers, Brayan Cortez and Jamie Montesa, were caught publishing a Snapchat video of themselves taunting Margaret Collins, an elderly resident with dementia. Snapchat is a multimedia app and popular social media channel used by over 180 million people every day. Each post made is called a “snap.”

The video went public just days before the Christmas holiday in 2018 and showed Collins lying in bed and visibly upset from being taunted by employees throwing a hospital gown at her several times, a clothing item her family says Abington workers knew would make her distressed. The video was captioned with “Margaret hates gowns,” and the “snap” was decorated with two laughing face emojis. A former employee saw the video and shared it with the resident’s family.

Illinois Nursing Home Worker Arrested For Misconduct

Published on: July 25, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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Nursing Home Resident Physically Harmed by CNA in Freeport

Freeport Police arrested a former certified nursing assistant (CNA) at an Illinois nursing home in Stephenson County after being accused of attacking an elderly resident earlier this year. The 34-year-old aid with a history of being employed by nursing homes is charged with official misconduct and aggravated battery to a senior citizen.

Detectives say the worker, identified as James Spann, put the 73-year-old resident in a chokehold and a headlock while working at Walnut Acres. Walnut Acres is formerly known as the Stephenson County Nursing Center, located at 2946 S. Walnut Rd. in Freeport.

List of Worst Nursing Homes In Illinois

Published on: June 6, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

List of 22 Seriously Under-Performing Nursing Homes in Illinois Released Publicly for First Time

After an inquiry led by U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Pat Toomey (R-PA), the Special Focus Facility (SFF) program, overseen by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), shared a list of nearly 400 consistently underperforming nursing homes, 22 of which are located throughout Illinois. Previously CMS did not publicly disclose the names and locations of these SFF identified facilities. These are nursing homes that if not improved or fail to provide resolutions to documented quality problems, can be cut off by Medicare and Medicaid funding and support.

On June 3, 2019, the concerned lawmakers published the list in a public report titled, Families’ and Residents’ Rights to Know: Uncovering Poor Care in America’s Nursing Homes, and included all of the homes CMS has deemed to have a “persistent record of poor care” and systemic shortcomings.

Illinois Nursing Home Violators 2019

Published on: May 7, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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IDPH Releases First Report of The Year Listing Nursing Home Violators

The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has released its first Quarterly Report of Nursing Home Violators for 2019. This report dates January 2019 thru March 2019 and highlights Illinois facilities cited for violations of the Nursing Home Care Act, a statute that provides nursing home residents and their families with the assurance that proper and safe care will be received.

Facilities with violations in quarter one of 2019 include:

Why Is Candida Auris Deadly?

Published on: April 10, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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Chicago-Area Attorney Steve Levin Comments on Deadly Fungus Outbreak Occurring in Illinois

Both The New York Times and Chicago Tribune recently reported a drug resistant super fungus called Candida auris, is plaguing 50 percent of Chicago-area nursing homes. This is a germ the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has deemed an urgent threat and is tricky to kill even with hospital grade disinfectants. The fungus, which is a yeast, is most noticeably found throughout patient rooms, on the skin of patients, and on daily medical devices such as blood pressure cuffs and medication containers. The most serious cases of infection from the fungus often occur in skilled nursing facilities that care for ventilated patients, or in long-term acute care settings.

“This is unacceptable,” says attorney Steve Levin, founder and senior partner of Levin & Perconti in Chicago. “We don’t know which nursing homes have been impacted yet – and, given the lengths that long-term care facilities’ corporate owners will go to in order to keep secret the dangerous conditions and poor care behind their closed doors – we might never know.”

Nursing Home Opioid Theft

Published on: March 1, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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Wisconsin Nurse Charged for Stealing Opioids from Three Nursing Homes

News of a Wisconsin nurse charged with stealing medication from three nursing homes is unfortunately too common of a read these days. According to the Feb. 2019 criminal complaint, the 36-year-old nurse was charged with four counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud and two counts of misdemeanor theft while being employed by Atrium Health Care in Chippewa County. The charges came after another employee contacted local police alerting them that a worker at a nursing home had her name forged in a book that tracks narcotic counts. The book showed Oxycodone had been signed out 11 times with conflicting signatures.

The thief, who was also a trusted nurse, was soon identified and later admitted to taking Opioids and prescription pills, including Vicodin, Oxycodone and Lorazepam, and others from two nursing homes she worked at as well. Opioid drugs are commonly prescribed by physicians for nursing home residents with moderate to severe pain and those in serious, life-threatening illness and can include:

Interim Nursing Home Staff Issues

Published on: February 22, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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New Administrator Hired for DeKalb County Rehab and Nursing Center

The DeKalb County Rehab and Nursing Center now has a permanent administrator after more than five months of operating under interim leadership. According to a report published on February 20 in The DeKalb Daily Chronicle, the county nursing home’s operating board recently voted, 7-0, to approve Cheryl Vittorio of Elgin as the new administrator. Vittorio was previously the interim administrator of another nursing home and rehabilitation facility in Jacksonville, Illinois. Jeff Whelan, DeKalb County Board member and chairman of the DeKalb County Rehab and Nursing Center Operating Board, said her base pay will be $112,000 a year and increase after a six-month probationary period. The previous administrator was no longer employed at the facility as of September 19 when the board found that leadership responsibilities fell short on many situations.

Prior to the administrator’s departure, the facility was fined a Type “A” violation in total of $25,000 after a patient fell and was seriously injured when improperly moved to a bed, according to a quarterly report from the Illinois Department of Public Health. A Type “A” violation pertains to an incident in which there is a substantial probability that death or serious mental or physical harm will result, or has resulted. DeKalb County Rehab and Nursing Center is a large facility with 190 beds and has county ownership. It is located in DeKalb, Illinois and participates in Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Illinois Award Cap Restored At 2 Million

Published on: January 11, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

Justice for Veterans Served: Illinois Legislators Raise Claim Cap to $2 Million, Retroactive for Quincy Legionnaires’ Victims’ Families

Triggered in 2014, the misdiagnoses and poorly managed care of residents with Legionnaires’ disease claimed the lives of 15 veterans living at the state-run VA facility in Quincy over a two-year span. Because of the tragedies, a handful of advocacy groups and Illinois lawmakers have been working to prevent deaths like this from occurring again while proposing ways to seek justified claims on behalf of those who were lost due to the state’s negligence.

Who Suffers Most At Glenshire Nursing Home?

Published on: December 18, 2018 | Levin & Perconti

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Underfunded Glenshire Nursing Home Continues with “Bad Record”

Steve Levin, founder and senior partner at Levin & Perconti, recently spoke with FOX32 to support the news outlet’s investigative report covering trending problems for Illinois’ nursing homes stemming from a backlog and delay in Medicaid funding. One facility highlighted was Glenshire Nursing Home and Rehabilitation. Levin recently handled a case for the family of 44-year-old Parnell Benjamin who died last October due to neglect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xipybpXtrOg

Why Do Some Nursing Home Residents Wander?

Published on: November 19, 2018 | Levin & Perconti

Understanding Why Nursing Home Residents Wander

1 in 10 Americans, older than 65, will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia. These individuals will experience a drastic decline in mental abilities that make it difficult to complete daily activities most take for granted such as eating, bathing, socializing, or even the ability to remember their own name or address. A majority of dementia victims will require an intense amount of supervised care and physical assistance to go about these routines. More often than not, families will put their trust in a nursing home center to manage the progressive, non-curable disease that will continue to worsen their loved ones until death. For individuals with who live in nursing homes or long-term care facilities with dementia and have no family to check-in or watch out for them, receiving the best care can be difficult due to the staff responsible for the growing number of abuse and neglect cases impacting nursing home residents today.

Wandering represents one of many behavioral problems occurring in people with the dementia. In fact, six out of 10 people with dementia will wander and aimlessly move about within the facility or grounds without regard of their personal safety. For a better understanding of this phenomena, The National Council of Certified Dementia Practitioners (NCCDP) has identified several different reasons for wandering in nursing homes as well as the different types of wandering.