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

The 87-year-old nursing home resident likely meant no harm. He suffers from dementia and wouldn’t give a belt used to assist residents with walking back to certified nursing assistant Sharoia D. Hill. But Hill became frustrated with his aggressive behavior. She decided to remedy the situation by hitting the frail man with a closed fist. Now the 28-year-old nursing aide faces up to five years in prison on a Class 3 felony charge, according to The News-Gazette.

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Nora Bekis trusted her son Larry to handle her matters. The 83-year-old woman had chronic lung disease and dementia and had moved into a Minnesota nursing home. She gave her son power of attorney to pay her bills and care for her home. Larry took out a $100,000 reverse mortgage on his mother’s home, but somehow Nora’s nursing home bill went unpaid to the point where she owed a whopping $49,000, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press.

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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.

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Last month I told you the story of two nurses at Woodstock Residence in Woodstock, Ill., who were charged with criminal neglect and obstructing justice as a result into investigations into murders at the nursing home. Marty Himebaugh allegedly administered drugs such as morphine to calm restless patients and gave overdoses to others she deemed had lived long enough. Complaints made to her supervisor Penny Whitlock were dismissed.

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The Westside Health Care Center nursing home and its adjacent Terrace at Westside residential-care facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, had become known as the home of last resort for the poor and mentally ill. Many of the residents had been kicked out of other nursing facilities and halfway houses. Many had drug addictions or mental illnesses.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A joint meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition and Consumer Rights and U.S. Senate Aging Committee was held this morning to discuss S. 2838, The Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act, sponsored by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the Senate Aging Committee, and Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla. The bill’s sponsors argued that more nursing home facilities are requiring patients and their families to sign mandatory arbitration agreements, signing away their right to sue in the event of abuse or neglect, which they said is unfair.

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