› $580,975,000 verdict in personal injury case
A lawsuit filed on behalf of a class of thousands of residents at 27 Colorado nursing homes operated by SavaSeniorCare claims that state officials allowed the nursing homes to operate without insurance in violation of state law, leaving residents without means to sue when they are abused and neglected, according to the Denver Post.
A former manager at a Cambridgeshire, England nursing home says he is the victim of sabotage by disgruntled staff members who didn’t agree with his measures to improve the facility’s poor standards. But the claims made against him are mounting, according to the Cambridge News.
Sisters Duanne Bewely, 36, and Fiona Nicolas, 38, worked as a team, running Faith Manor Vermont and Faith Manor Melrose assisted living facilities in south Florida. They marketed themselves as a fully licensed facility and won over the trust of physicians and clinic owners, who would refer patients to their homes. Those health care professionals now say they would have never put patients in the care of the sisters had they known they were lying and cheating the government.
The family of a woman who was sexually assaulted at an Indiana nursing home wants the home shut down for not taking measures to prevent the rape of their daughter by a fellow resident, according to WHAS-TV.
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California nursing homes are taking advantage of last year’s cuts to the state’s ombudsman program and slacking off on responsibilities to their patients, according to Ombudsman Services of Northern California. The organization lost two-thirds of its staff when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed $3.8 million in funding for long-term care ombudsman programs last year, according to News 10.
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An Iowa nursing home has been ordered to pay $7,000 in federal fines for not investigating complaints from staff and residents about sexual abuse from a male nursing aide. Eight separate incidents of abuse against different residents had been made to managers and supervisors at New Homestead Care Center involving staffer Juan Bautista-Meraz, according to the Des Moines Register.
Family members of one of three female nursing home residents are accusing the nursing home where they lived with trying to cover up incidents of sexual abuse, according to Keloand Television. The victims all were residents of Castle Manor Nursing Home in Hot Springs, South Dakota.
State Sen. Dan Kotowski said he had good intentions when he sponsored a bill in the Illinois General Assembly that would refund fines paid by nursing homes that promised to use the money to improve care at their facilities. But opponents of the bill say it is faulty and would only “eliminate the financial disincentive for bad behavior,” according to the State Journal-Register.
DuPage County, Illinois officials are stepping up their investigations into allegations of physical abuse of elderly in nursing homes and in-home health care settings, spurred in part by the horrifying story of a nursing home resident who froze to death last month after wandering outside her nursing home, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The wife of an 80-year-old who suffered from dementia moved her husband into Elderberry Square assisted living facility in Florence, Oregon, so the staff there could give her husband the care she could no longer manage on her own. But each time she visited him over the two months he was there, something just didn’t seem right. Her frail husband was left unsupervised, during which he fell repeatedly. One fall resulted in a broken wrist. She also found him several times lying in his own waste.
