COVID-19 in Nursing Homes - Learn More.
Firm’s Partnership Expands to Eight Members With Work Continuing Even as Lawyers, Staff “Stay at Home”
Levin & Perconti is proud to welcome Andrew J. (“A.J.”) Thut as the firm’s newest partner.
Thut has been with the firm since 201 and earned his law degree from Loyola University Chicago School of Law. A.J. has successfully settled and tried to verdict a variety of cases, including a $2.77 million jury verdict in a nursing home fall case.
During these difficult times it is important for patients and their families to understand that residents in nursing homes still have the right to expect proper care.
Direct communication with facility staff, including the director of nursing and administration is key. Find out what the staff is doing to prevent and control COVID-19. Here are some things staff should be doing:
The quick spread of coronavirus and strict isolation measures overtaking U.S. nursing homes has created a stressful time for not only nursing home care staff but all nursing home residents. Many of these residents are battling health conditions, living away from family, and now restricted from visitors and isolated in their rooms, or have been moved into different areas of the facility where they can no longer socialize with others. An individuals’ moral, as well as the types of mental health care resources available in nursing homes, are important considerations to take seriously during these ongoing disruptions.
In the midst of the pandemic, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News performed a survey requesting feedback from nursing home administrators and nursing directors on how they are working to “keep spirits up” during the lockdown and what types of extra attention directed toward residents is being provided.
With new directives placing strict limits on visitors to nursing homes and many assisted living facilities taking similar precautions, friends and families of residents living in long-term care facilities are using creative ways to stay in touch with their loved ones.
As of March 19, public health officials in Illinois have recognized four long-term care facilities in the Chicago area reporting COVID-19 cases. This includes a possible coronavirus outbreak inside a nursing home in west suburban Willowbrook involving 46 people, including 33 residents and 13 staff.
As public health officials wait on additional test results to come back related to Willowbrook, two residents have tested positive for COVID-19 in Evanston at Three Crowns Park, there is one confirmed case at Admiral at the Lake facility in Chicago’s Edgewater, and a staff member at the Church Creek Senior Living Center in Arlington Heights is also infected. Nursing home advocates and family members of residents are only left to wonder how the viral spread might make its way into other facilities around the state.
Levin & Perconti founder and attorney Steven Levin joined ABC7 to talk about how an already understaffed long-term care system continues to weaken the care of our most vulnerable citizens due to COVID-19.
On Tuesday, March 15, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the first death from the new coronavirus in Illinois. The woman had close contact with another person infected with the virus. The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) said she did have an underlying health condition but was not a resident of a nursing home facility. Although a total of 160 cases of COVID-19 have now been tracked in the state, including 22 cases at Willowbrook nursing home in DuPage County impacting 18 residents and four employees. Chicago’s WGN9 reported the first resident’s confirmed test over the weekend by state health officials. The resident is now in critical condition. The virus has since moved quickly to others at the Chateau Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, located in the 7000 block of South Madison Street in Willowbrook.
Although nursing homes are equipped with infection control recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and required to follow them by state and local health agencies – they simply are not. USA TODAY is reporting that “75% of U.S. nursing homes have been cited for failing to properly monitor and control infections in the last three years — a higher proportion than previously known.” These failures, often controlled by understaffed shifts, overworked caregivers, and less than 10% of facilities with infection-control specialty trained staff, all provide proof to predict that nursing homes are going to have even a tougher time preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
Steven Levin, founding partner and attorney at Levin & Perconti, recently spoke to USA TODAY on the dangerous yet stagnant issue of the spread of infectious disease in nursing homes, remarking that, “The nursing homes that we deal with have extreme difficulty in handling everyday infections, and it’s an infection-rich environment.”
By now it seems self-evident that the nursing homes and assisted living centers housing many of our elderly and most vulnerable citizens are uniquely susceptible to outbreaks of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.
We know that the disease is particularly dangerous for older people. We understand intuitively that a site where older people — some of whom cycle in and out of hospitals, bringing germs back and forth — live in close quarters, with shared spaces and resources, faces heightened risk for infection and contagion.
Over the next 20 years, the country will see a surge in the number of older adults who can no longer care for themselves, as will the number of persons diagnosed with dementia. A sizable amount of these two groups are likely to need long-term care services, one being the age 85 and older population — which is expected to double between 2025 and 2040. And a new report from our Midwest neighbors to the north is showing the most grimace future for an ongoing issue we have in Illinois as well. According to a new report based on a survey of long-term care providers in Wisconsin, vacancies for caregivers increased with nearly 1 in 4 openings going unfilled.
“In the future if there continues to be vacancy rates, there may be concerns down the road about the possible closure of some long-term care facilities,” said John Vander Meer, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Health Care Association and the Wisconsin Center for Assisted Living.
Summary of Long-Term Caregiver Survey Results
Levin & Perconti is proud to welcome Cari F. Silverman and Jaime Koziol Delaney as the firm’s newest partners. Cari has been with the firm since 2010 and earned her law degree from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her most notable settlements include a $6 million medical negligence settlement and a $4.75 million medical malpractice settlement. Jaime graduated from DePaul University College of Law in May 2011 and began working at Levin & Perconti in April 2012. She has successfully settled a variety of cases, including a $9 million medical malpractice case, a hospital fall lawsuit, and many nursing home negligence cases.
The two new partners bring the firm’s partnership to seven members, four of whom are women. They will join founding partners Steven Levin and John Perconti, and partners Susan L. Novosad, Michael F. Bonamarte, IV, and Margaret P. Battersby Black to lead the Chicago-based legal team in upholding a reputation of earning million dollar client verdicts and settlements for clients.
“We are so proud of the work Cari and Jaime do for our clients and of their emerging leadership within our firm,” said co-founding partner Steven M. Levin. “These women are talented and tenacious advocates who get top results for the people they represent while also being excellent, collaborative team members to work with.”
Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog