Articles Posted in Nursing Home Abuse and Negligence

Our Boston nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers represent clients that have been sexually abused. Unfortunately, because of their poor health, diminished capacities, and/or advanced age, nursing home patients can make easy targets for abusers.

Elderly persons that live in assisted living facilities generally need help taking care of themselves. They also may be physically and/or mentally incapacitated, which means they are even less able to defend themselves against abusers than members of the general public. One reason for this is that many of them lack to not just comprehend what happened-especially if a patient is suffering from dementia or some other form of mental illness-but also, he/she may not be able (or be too frightened) to report what has happened.

It is the responsibility of Massachusetts assisted living facilities to make sure that patients are kept physically and emotionally safe while under their supervision. In addition to providing adequate security and qualified, well-trained staff, nursing homes must make sure that they do a thorough background check to weed out any sexual predators from the employee roster. Proper supervision, security cameras, and secured entrances and exits can also prevent uninvited guests from entering and exiting the premises. Hopefully, such measures can hopefully discourage unwanted advances made toward a patient by a member of the nursing team, visitors, another patient, or anyone else.

According to the National Weather Service, temperatures are expected to go no higher than 17 degrees in Boston, while wind chill will go down to five feet below. The weather predicted to be even colder in the central and western areas of Massachusetts, with wind chills going down to 22 below zero in the Berkshires and winds moving at 30 miles per hour in Worcester.

With such cold weather, it is important that nursing homes exercise the necessary precautions to make sure that patients don’t end up getting sick or dying from exposure to the cold weather. Failure to protect patients from related cold weather-related injuries and illnesses can be grounds for a Boston nursing home neglect case.

Examples of Cold Weather-Related Nursing Home Injuries:

Over the years, our Boston nursing home negligence law firm has blogged about the serious injuries that can result when a Massachusetts nursing home patient is subject to serious abuse or neglect. While such incidents are never the victim’s fault, we’ve talked about steps that family members can take beforehand to decrease the chances of placing their loved one in the hands of negligent nursing staff and caregivers.

Such preventive measures have included visiting the nursing home beforehand to check out the facilities, level of sanitary conditions, whether current patients seem happy there, and if staff seem competent at their job and appear to take a genuine interest in their patients. We’ve also talked about how important it was to visit the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services online to find out how the government has rated particular facility and how each nursing home under consideration compares with others in terms of health inspections, staffing, and other quality measures.

Now, the CMS is providing even more in-depth information for you to peruse when deciding where to place your loved one. Rather than having to submit a Freedom of Information act request or ask a nursing home for more specifics about why it received a particularly high or low rating, you can go to Nursing Home Compare online and choose to see the entire text of the report that nursing home inspectors have filed on a particular facility. This will hopefully provide families with even more information when deciding where their loved one should receive treatment/live.

A former health care worker has been arraigned on the criminal charge of manslaughter for allegedly ignoring that a client in a Milton group home was choking to death. According Annie Kwankam’s attorney, his client thought that the 57-year-old Lauren Wolf, who was severely mentally disabled, was just kidding around when she grabbed her throat and fell to the ground while eating a piece of steak.

The Massachusetts choking death accident took place in a Milton group home in 2009. At the time, Kwankam was a residential counselor there.

Prosecutors contend that Kwankam failed to cut the meat into pieces small enough for Wolf to eat. 20 minutes after the Milton choking accident, Kwankam contacted 911, telling the dispatcher that sometimes she wasn’t sure when Wolf was playing around.

Choking Accidents
Unfortunately, there are many elderly and mentally ill patients that are prone to choking injuries. Some may no longer have all their teeth, experience swallowing problems, or have lost the mental awareness to know whether/not their food is ready to swallow. At Massachusetts nursing homes and in residences where private caretakers are hired, it is not uncommon for nursing staff or the professional caregiver to be responsible for properly blending or cutting up the foods so that the patient doesn’t accidentally choke. Some patients even require personal supervision and hands-on assistance while they eat. In the event of a choking accident, it is the staff’s responsibility to immediately administer help, and if necessary, call in other medical professionals.

Common causes of choking accidents at care facilities:
• Inadequate training • Not enough staff
• Poor supervision • Neglect • Inexperience

If your loved one was injured or died in a choking accident, you may want to speak with a Boston nursing home neglect law firm to explore your legal options. Your civil case would be separate from any criminal proceedings, with their outcomes unrelated. This means that regardless of whether or not a negligent nursing professional is charged or convicted in criminal court, you still may be able to successfully obtain damages.

Ex-health care worker faces manslaughter charge for choking death of patient in Milton group home, Boston.com, October 18, 2012

More Blog Posts:
Study May Have Exposed Elderly Boston Nursing Home Patients to Greater Risk of Fall Accidents, Boston Injury Lawyer Blog, October 4, 2012

Boston Nursing Home Negligence?: “Hand Hygiene” is A Health Concern at Some Facilities, Boston Injury Lawyer Blog, August 30, 2012

Hot Weather Can Place the Health of Boston Nursing Home Patients at Risk, Boston Injury Lawyer Blog, August 21, 2012 Continue reading

Our Boston nursing home negligence lawyers represent families whose loved ones have sustained injury, illness, or died because of Massachusetts nursing home abuse and neglect. While overt misconduct, such as physical abuse, is often the cause of resident harm, sometimes, a patient can get hurt or sick because a nursing home worker was careless or failed/forgot to follow general care protocol.

In a blog post published this week in the New York Times, the newspaper article focuses on a study examining “hand hygiene,” at nursing homes that was published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology. Although it may seem that washing your hands when taking care of nursing home residents would be a given-this apparently isn’t always what happens.

Per inspectors, the percentage of nursing homes that have received citations for hand hygiene deficiencies has grown. While between 2000 and 2002 this type of deficiency was only found in less than 7.4% of nursing homes, by 2009, hand hygiene issues were found in nearly 12% of nursing homes.

When the temperature is too hot, Massachusetts nursing home patients-especially the elderly can be placed at risk of developing serious heat-related illnesses and complications unless the proper precautions are executed. If you believe that Boston nursing home neglect caused your family member to become ill because of heat stress, heat stroke, or any other reason, please contact Altman & Altman LLP today to request your free case evaluation.

Heat Stress and Heat Stroke

When in very hot weather, the body will up its blood flow and perspire to regulate its own temperature. However, because many elderly persons’ bodies don’t adapt as well to the heat-many may be taking medications that make it harder for their bodies to self-regulate-this can cause heat stress, which can bring about other health complications. (Also, chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes, a heart condition, or circulatory issues can make it hard for the body to emit the normal adjustment response to high temperatures.) Heat stress may even turn to heat stroke. When this happens, the body’s temperature can hit 106 degrees or higher in 10 to 15 minutes, potentially causing permanent disability or death if medical care isn’t provided right away.

According to a Boston Globe investigation, in 2010 there were about 185,000 US nursing home patients that took antipsychotic meds even though federal regulators recommended otherwise. Many times, the powerful drugs were prescribed to counter combative behavior and agitation from residents.

Antipsychotics, which are used to treat severe mental illnesses, can leave patients in a stupor and there can be potentially fatal side effects. Yet per federal data examined by the Globe, more than one out of every five assisted living facilities gives antipsychotics to a significant number of their residents. This problem is especially prevalent at Massachusetts nursing homes where that year 28% of assisted living facilities prescribed antipsychotic medications to patients who weren’t suffering from illnesses that required its use compared that to 21% of US nursing homes.

Many of the patients who are given antipsychotics have dementia. Yet according to the US Federal Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services these meds are not appropriate for most of these patients. Side effects can include abnormal heart rhythm, dizziness, lowered blood pressure, urinary problems, and vision problems, which can have devastating consequences for someone who is also elderly and/or very sick.