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› $580,975,000 verdict in personal injury case
Hazel Earll, a 65-year-old mentally challenged woman, was doing well in rehab at Great Plains Regional Medical Center in Nebraska, after a total replacement of her right hip. She was soon able to bear weight on her right side. Days later, on Nov. 22, 2006, she was transferred to North Platte Care Centre for further rehabilitation. But instead of improving, her condition got considerably worse, according to the North Platte Bulletin.
No one knows how 95-year-old Fannie Mae Rooks ended up outside on the night before Christmas Eve. But somehow her wheelchair had been pushed through the handicapped-accessible doors to the outdoor smoking area at Northgate Park Nursing Home in Florissant, Mo, according to Trading Markets/St. Louis Post-Dispach. Rooks was found dead in the courtyard around 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve.
Thelma Bryant, a 94-year-old woman at Kane Glen Hazel nursing home in Pittsburgh, Pa., was hit in the head, struck in the chest with an elbow, had oranges thrown at her, had her feet stomped, and was cussed at by center employees who were charged with providing her care, according to MSNBC.
Sixty-seven-year-old Melvin Raybon laid helpless in his bed at Tucker Nursing Center in Tucker, Ga., while a bedsore grew on his left buttocks and became infected to the bone, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Staff at the nursing home where he lived should have turned him every two hours to prevent the massive bedsore. However employees said there simply wasn’t enough staff to meet that need. Instead, the attorney representing Raybon’s daughter said he was turned about every four hours.
Former nurse’s aide Jaclyn Dawn VanWinkle doesn’t understand why her dancing and singing to a nursing home patient has caused such a ruckus, according to Lexington (Ken.) Living. The 25-year-old woman was arrested and charged with wanton neglect of an 84-year-old resident at Madison Manor Nursing Home in Richmond, Ken., where VanWinkle was employed. At least eight other employees face criminal charges, according to the report.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last week posted a new system on its Web site, Nursing Home Compare, that rates all Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes with a five-star system.
Measuring the quality of a nursing home is not always clear-cut. More that 1.5 million people live in 15,000 nursing homes throughout the country. Each facility is inspected annually and must meet federal standards in order to participate in Medicaid and Medicare. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has established the site to give the public a better understanding of how nursing homes compare to others.
Most people don’t want to even think that their parents have having sex – much less their grandparents. However, researchers from Kansas State say that physical and sexual intimacy is alive and well in many nursing homes and caregivers should be trained on how to handle situations that arise, according to The Hays Daily News.
The black box warning on the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal says it all: “Increased mortality in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis.” But Bruce Bowman’s children claim they were never told by the nursing home staff that cared for their father that the medication he was being given could kill him.
Jan Reshetar stood up at a press conference last week and said she thought her mother-in-law’s agitation was caused by her Alzheimer’s disease. She was mortified to learn that her 84-year-old family member was actually trying desperately to communicate through her cognitively impaired state, trying to tell her family about the humiliating abuse and sexual taunting she was subjected to for months as a resident of the Good Samaritan Society nursing home in Albert Lea, Minn.
The 75-year-old woman with diabetes and dementia who is recovering at the state-run Emily P. Bissell Hospital, a skilled nursing facility in Delaware, after fracturing her leg after a fall in January 2007, told her visiting nieces that staff members were mean to her. Those family members also noted signs of neglect in personal hygiene of their ailing aunt, and secretly installed a hidden video surveillance camera to keep watch on their aunt, according to Delaware Online. The $600 motion-sensitive video camera showed staff yelling and slapping the hands and face of the bedridden aunt while she pleaded for help.
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