Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Reports of deaths and serious complications in patients who have been treated with Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) systems has resulted in a warning to acute and long-term health care facilities staff and consumers by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

NPWT is a topical negative pressure, sub-atomospheric pressure dressing or vacuum sealing technique generally indicated for the management of wounds, burns, ulcers, flaps and graphs. NPWT apply negative pressure to the wound in order to remove fluids, including wound exudates, irrigation fluids and infectious materials. The system is thought to benefit wounds healing by removing wound fluid and dessicated tissue, decreasing the level of bacteria in the wound, improving blood flow in the wound and surrounding tissue, promote granulation tissue, and pulling the wound edges together and stimulating cell growth.

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One of the young women accused this week of taking nude photos of residents of a Virginia nursing home without their consent has told news station WSLS that she is innocent of any wrongdoing. Livia Crisan, 25, turned herself in to police on Thursday after talking with WSLS reporter Lindsey Ward. Crisan, a nursing assistant, told the reporter she did photograph a man in her care, but he was fully clothed at the time.

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In a developing story first reported by WSLS TV in Roanoke, Virginia, on Wednesday, now two former employees of the Waddell Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Galax have been arrested. They are charged with intentionally videotaping and taking photos of residents either undressing or in the nude, without the residents’ consent.

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Nineteen-year-old Brianna Broitzman told a judge this week she is not responsible for physically and sexually abusing cognitively impaired residents at the Good Samaritan nursing home in the Albert Lea, Minn., nursing home where she worked as a nursing aide. Broitzman is one of four teenagers charged with abusing 15 residents at the home. She and former coworker Ashton Larson, who was 18 at the time of the incident, are the only two being charged as adults.

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Nursing home officials did nothing to stop a male resident at a La Salle County, Illinois nursing home from sexually abusing 10 female patients and sexually soliciting several others, according to allegations in a report from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

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It was almost unbelievable, the reports of patients being physically and sexually abused by nursing home aides at Good Samaritan Society of Albert Lea in Minnesota. The aides said they didn’t mean any harm when they held down patients, shoved their fingers and hands in their mouths and noses to quiet their cries and screams, rubbed and hit their breasts and genitals, and sexually “humped” them. They simply called it, “work fun, or to get a good laugh.”

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued new guidance for nursing home surveyors, offering more clarification for several components of the survey that aim to improve nursing home residents’ quality of life and environment. Under these new guidelines, nursing home surveys will be focused on key areas such as ensuring residents live with dignity, offering choices in care and services, accommodating the environment to each residents’ needs and preferences, and creating a more homelike environment with access to visitors.

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More than a million senior citizens suffer from abuse or neglect in a single year, many of whom live in nursing homes, according to the National Center on Elder Abuse. For every case reported to authorities, more than five go unreported. These startling statistics have rallied the eldercare advocacy group International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (INPEA) to declare a day to raise awareness of the cultural, social, economic and demographic process affecting elder abuse and neglect through community events aimed at promoting understanding of abuse and neglect of older persons.

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Florida state regulators have recently fined Azalea Court nursing home in West Palm Beach, Florida $16,000 after a patient was found on the floor with maggots crawling out of his leg cast, according to On Call with Phil Galewitz, from the Palm Beach Post.

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Beasley Allen attorney J.P. Sawyer is representing the family of an Arkansas man who suffered at the hands of staff ill-equipped to care for him at the White Hall Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The complaint alleges the nursing home facility put profits over people, misrepresenting its ability to properly care for residents in order to hold onto government funding.

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