nursing homes Tag Archives — Page 2 of 4 — Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog

8 Questions For Your Next Nursing Home Visit

Published on: September 10, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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8 Things You Can Ask During a Routine Nursing Home Visit

Everyone hopes that your family has made the right choice in transitioning a loved one to the best Illinois nursing home that will meet their specific care needs and keep them safe. But validating that best home quality doesn’t just happen before you decide to place them there. Ongoing evaluations of a facility’s ability to give the constant care and supervision will be necessary, so your loved one will not be found neglected, abused, or forgotten.

Before making any nursing home visits to see a loved one, we often advise family members to consider taking time to research the latest inspection reports and prepare questions for nursing home staff to answer that could help reveal any mistreatment.

Sexual Assault Reported At Illinois Nursing Home

Published on: August 27, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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Aperion Care Fined After Dementia Resident Was Sexually Assaulted

The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has fined an Aperion Care nursing home in Jacksonville $25,000 for an alleged resident-to-resident sexual assault. According to the state agency’s report of Illinois nursing home violators, an investigation found the facility to have failed at adequately assessing and identifying sexual vulnerability and resident-to-resident abuse.

Here is what was found through IDPH’s report:

Nursing Home Abuse Is Alarmingly On The Rise

Published on: August 27, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

nursing home abuse and neglect

Senators Blame Government Regulating Office for Growing Number of Nursing Home Deficiencies

On Tuesday, July 23, bi-partisan members of the Senate Finance Committee, led by ranking committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), once again raised alarming concerns over the rising amount of physical, verbal, mental and sexual abuse incidences occurring inside U.S. nursing homes. In addition, and not for the first time this year, confusion regarding the current lack of oversight role the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is playing, and funding needs to support sufficient resident-to-staff ratios were recognized and discussed at great length.

Several lawmakers referenced a same-day released report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that found:

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.

The Importance Of Advocating For Older Americans

Published on: May 16, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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The Time Is Now to Advocate for Older Adults

Any day is better than the last for advocating for the elderly as data from Adult Protective Services (APS) shows more than 5,000,000 elders are abused each year, including 1 in 10 elders over the age of 60. The abuse and neglect can come in many forms, including physical, emotional, sexual and financial, and not always obvious.

Like every other year, during the month of May, the Administration for Community Living, an operating division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, leads our nation’s observance of Older Americans Month. For this year the theme is, Connect, Create, Contribute and aimed to encourage older adults and their communities, including advocates, to:

Deregulation Hurts Nursing Home Residents

Published on: May 2, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

The Problem with Easing Regulations That Protect Nursing Home Residents

Several new policies were created to safeguard residents in 2014 setting nursing homes up for better accountability, such as fining violating nursing homes each day until problems were fixed and publicly exposing a facility when residents report care complaints. But since 2016, regulation on the rules nursing homes have to follow in order to collect Medicare or Medicaid dollars has seen a risky overhaul, marking the new administration responsible for the removal of several health and safety regulations essential to protecting residents.

These rules were intended to dictate how nursing homes operate, and the group’s inspections and surveys are designed to spur change and compliance through Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS is the federal agency tasked with the oversight and regulation of over 15,600 nursing homes in the United States. In August 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued an alert that CMS has inadequate procedures to identify and report incidents of abuse or neglect to law enforcement.

Diabetic Patient Died From Nursing Home’s Mistakes

Published on: May 2, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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Diabetic Patient Dies After Given Too Much Medication at California Care Facility

A diabetic patient has died at Bella Vista transitional care facility located in San Luis Obispo County in California, and the home is now facing a wrongful death lawsuit. The civil lawsuit states care staff gave an 85-year-old female patient too much medication to manage her diabetes when they dispensed four doses of medicine in less than four hours.

According to the complaint, the woman also had dementia, hypertension, hyperlipidemia in addition to her diabetes while a patient at Bella Vista the last eight months. She relied on facility staff for help with nearly all of her daily living activities and depended on them to manage her conditions and medications. As outlined in local news reports, the troubling events leading up to the woman’s death began in the early morning hours.

Staffing Needs Trump Innovative Resident Treatments

Published on: April 15, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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New Research Points to Music as Easy Form of Resident Therapy

Nursing home staff who make the time and administrators who devote the resources to helping residents recover from an injury or deal with an illness through something as simple as listening to music are on the right track says researchers at John Hopkins University. Leaders at one of the nation’s top-ranked hospitals have started music therapy sessions focused on the unique therapy needs of patients. After several months, staff evaluated the music routines and observed nursing home residents with debilitating memory diseases like Alzheimer’s associate certain music patterns as a cue to perform daily activities such as getting out of bed, eating, and even showering. These are all acts the residents were not able to perform previous to the music therapy.

The music playlists are designed to minimize distraction and increase productivity and played to balance the mind. Johns Hopkins Medicine suggests listening to music does the same thing for a brain as going to the gym does for a body and that listening to music can reduce pain, anxiety, and blood pressure as well as improve mood, ease tension, and increase memory. The movement to music also helps with coordination and increases relaxation.

What Happens To The Residents When A Nursing Home Closes?

Published on: April 3, 2019 | Levin & Perconti

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McClean County Nursing Home Residents Transferred After LeRoy Manor Closes

The former long-term care residents of the LeRoy Manor building, located in the central Illinois community of Bloomington-Normal, have moved to other nursing homes throughout Illinois. The private nursing home closed on February 15, 2019, displacing 75 employees and 66 residents. Administrators say about 90 percent of the residents were receiving Medicaid and poor reimbursement by the state was to blame for the closure. The group announced plans to end long-term care services at the home in January of 2019.

Thankfully, regional ombudsman from the East Central Illinois Area Agency on Aging told local news outlets that residents and their family members felt individual rights and desires were protected during the transition and that staff saw the process out appropriately. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and many residents preparing for a move out of their control will find themselves neglected or abused during a time of uncertainty and when changing staffing challenges become present. The move may be tough though for many of the LeRoy Manor residents who were originally from the area and able to stay connected with family and friends on a regular basis. These are relationships important when addressing basic care and medical needs and identifying nursing home neglect and abuse symptoms of loved ones.