› $580,975,000 verdict in personal injury case
Several staff members at a Kentucky nursing home were fired recently after an investigation found that employees had taken inappropriate photos and made audio recordings of residents at the facility, attached them to songs with sexual lyrics, and circulated them to other employees at the nursing home, according to the Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader.
Nursing homes that serve primarily Hispanic residents provide a lower quality of care compared to nursing homes that cater to a mostly white clientele, according to a Brown University study. The research, which was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, looked at the rate of bedsores at nursing homes in select states and found that residents in nursing homes with a larger concentration of Hispanic residents reported having more bedsores than nursing homes with lower concentrations of Hispanic residents.
Silver Lake Care Center of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, voluntarily closed its doors earlier this month after mounting complaints of physical and verbal abuse, financial woes, unresolved staffing issues, and numerous lawsuits alleging neglect and wrongful death, according to the News Examiner-Enterprise.
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 news took the staff at Quality Care Health Center in Lebanon, Tennessee by surprise. The Tennessee Department of Health issued a ban on new admissions, claiming those at the home are in immediate jeopardy, according to News Channel 5.
The announcement was spurred by a recent state and Federal Center for Medicare-Medicaid Services inspection that found the center in violation of physician services, nursing services and medical records.
Thousands of young and middle-aged adults with serious mental illnesses live in U.S. nursing homes, putting frail nursing home residents at risk for serious injury or death, according to a report gathered by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services prepared exclusively for the Associated Press.
Two senators have reintroduced legislation aimed at improving the quality of care in nursing homes. The Nursing Home Transparency and Improvement Act, reintroduced by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Herb Kohl (D-WI), would give consumers more information about the quality of care at nursing homes, provide the government with better tools to enforce high quality standards, and encourage nursing homes to improve on the care they provide, according to Trading Markets.
No one disputes that 74-year-old Julia McCauley, a resident at Life Care Center of Acton in Massachusetts rolled her wheelchair outside the front door of the home where she had lived five years. She had done it on more than one occasion. But in August of 2004, her trip through the exit resulted in her tumbling down a flight of stairs. She died shortly after the fall.
A new rule issued in September by the Bush Administration has made a once routine process of obtaining information from nursing homes to back up claims of abuse and neglect almost impossible. That juggernaut has people who are suing nursing homes wrangling between state and federal officials, according to the Washington Post.
Gregory Logan’s family was well known in Dedham, Massachusetts. Years ago his grandparents Samuel and Florence Logan founded the largest nursing home operation in the area. Logan served as the administrator of Logan Nursing & Rehabilitation in Braintree. But last year Logan and his two uncles, Joel Logan and Todd Logan, were accused of raiding patient accounts for personal use between January 2001 and June 2003. The uncles pleaded guilty in July to misappropriating Medicaid funds, conspiracy, larceny, embezzlement and patient neglect. They both received five years probation and were ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution.
