› $580,975,000 verdict in personal injury case
An Office of Health Facility Complaints Investigative Report by the Minnesota Department of Public Health dated May 7, 2008, revealed that three of the residents who were abused by employees at the Good Samaritan Society nursing home in Albert Lea, Minn., in the much-publicized “abuse-for-thrills” case are deceased.
Kathleen Chmura thought it was her soda that tasted funny. Then she realized it was the ice. And it tasted like urine.
Chmura had scooped the ice from the ice bin at By the Lake senior assisted living facility she owns in Hayden, Idaho. She immediately had a suspect in mind – a disgruntled employee who had just joined two other employees in a walkout to protest of a firing of two employees three days prior, according to The Seattle Times.
The “attacks-for-thrills” case where four nursing home aides were accused of abusing cognitively impaired residents at Good Samaritan Society in Albert Lea, Minn., for entertainment, has captured the attention of a national watchdog group, according to the Star Tribune.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo continues to target those who abuse and neglect individuals in institutional care homes. Earlier this week, three employees of a western New York nursing home were charged and one convicted of abusive acts against elderly patients. Many of the patients attacked have cognitive disorders, according to WIVB-TV.
John Whalen visited 87-year-old Bernice Mulch weekly at a Jacksonville, Ill., nursing home. Whalen, who had legal authority over the woman’s care, had no reason to believe that his friend was not getting adequate care. After she passed away, the Morgan County coroner investigated her death and determined that that Mulch’s death was caused by a nursing home staff member’s failure to follow doctor’s orders to give her antibiotics for an arm infection. As a result, the nursing home was fined $10,000 by the state, according to the State Journal-Register.
Caring and Sharing Home for Adults is home to up to 46 people in need of assistance from others. Like the nearly 50 other assisted living facilities in Newport News, Va., it is inspected by the state’s licensing division at least once a year. In 2008, the facility was inspected nine times – more than half of those were in response to complaints. The complaints were often anonymous and varied between neglect to children living there to spoiled food. But a new complaint about alleged verbal abuse by one employee resulted in action by the facility, according to the Daily Press.
Here is an update on a story we reported last month about an investigation into a Rockland County, N.Y., nursing home where a 90-year-old nun was killed when the closet in her room toppled over onto her. According to Lo Hud, New York’s Lower Hudson Valley newspaper, in the wake of the investigation into Summit Park Nursing Care, the patient-services administrator has announced he plans to resign and the maintenance director is taking an early retirement package. The nursing home’s patient-services administrator Aldo Trolani also served as the county’s acting commissioner of hospitals for the Department of Hospitals.
Two of the Minnesota nursing home aides charged in the “attacks for thrills” on vulnerable patients at Good Samaritan Society in Albert Lea are being charged as adults, according to Fox News. The remaining four suspects are charged with failing to report the incidents and will be tried as juveniles.
Armeda Thomas’ family was desperate to know the origin of Armeda’s mysterious bruises. The 84-year-old woman lived in Madison Manor nursing home in Richmond, Ken., and has Alzheimer’s Disease, which made getting the answers from her simply impossible. Even nursing home staff couldn’t tell family members why Armeda was covered in bruises. So the family took matters in their own hands and, last August, without knowledge of the nursing home, placed a hidden camera in Armeda’s room and pointed it to her bed.
An Edmond, Okla., nursing home has been fined $3,000 and is currently unable to receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements after an investigation found the nursing home did not respond quickly enough or adequately after learning a female resident was being sexually molested by another resident, according to KOKO-TV.
