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You could say that Clifford Verity meant well. He moved in with his aging mother, Ruth, took her to doctors’ appointments, even brought home fresh fish for dinner. He had worked previously as a certified nursing assistant caring for elderly in a nursing facility, and felt he could grant her wish not to be moved into a nursing home, but to age and die gracefully at home.
Joanne Kessler believed she was doing the right thing when in 2006 she moved her mother, Luveda Fern Kessler, from another assisted living facility to Villa Valencia Health Care Center in Orange County, Calif., to be closer to her. The elder Kessler had had both hip- and knee-replacement surgeries and used a walker for mobility. She needed assistance getting out of bed and to the bathroom, a nurse noted.
A truly disturbing report out of Illinois this week. A series of suspicious deaths at a Chicago-suburban nursing home in 2006, the so-called “mercy killings” of one nurse, now appear to be ruthless murders committed by a caregiver who became “fed up” with certain patients.
This week, members of the U.S. Senate will consider a bill that will establish a nationwide system of background checks for individuals who apply for jobs at long-term care facilities, The Daily Times (Farmington, New Mexico) reported today. If passed, the Patient Safety and Abuse Prevention Act would allow nursing homes to choose not to hire potentially abusive caregivers based on a coordinated system of checks against abuse and neglect registries, state police records and the FBI national database of criminal history records.
When the Hopley family moved 51-year-old Bruce Hopley into Golden Moments Senior Care Center in Jacksonville, Ill., in late August of 2006, they alerted staff that he was “severely diabetic,” and that he had required emergency hospitalization on numerous occasions for erratic blood sugar levels and seizures. Nineteen days later, just an hour after staff documented high blood sugar levels in his blood, Mr. Hopley was found dead, according to a story by the Jacksonville (Illinois) Journal-Courier.
Choosing a skilled nursing facility for a family member can be a daunting task. A web site, MemberoftheFamily.net, aims to help by offering free, easy-to-understand reports based on government surveys of approximately 16,000 nursing homes across the country. The site allows readers to review past and present state survey results, fire safety violations and substantiated complaints for all Medicare/Medicaid-certified nursing homes anywhere in the United States.
Nursing home residents and their families who sign mandatory arbitration clauses when being admitted into long-term care facilities, are one step closer to regaining their rights to hold those facilities accountable in court for abuse and neglect, according to the Senior Journal. The Journal reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee this week approved the bi-partisan bill - the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act of 2008. The bill moves to the Senate for approval.
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