Articles Posted in Nursing Home Abuse and Negligence

Around the globe on June 15, organizations will hold events to mark World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. The day supports the United Nations International Plan of Action that recognizes elder abuse as a public health and human rights problem.

Unfortunately, many people around the world still fail to recognize and/or stop elder neglect or abuse when these incidents happen. The more people are made aware that elder abuse and neglect exists, the easier it will be for them to identify such incidents and take steps to protect their loved ones. Otherwise, elder abuse and neglect incidents will continue to occur in private residents and in nursing homes throughout the world.

Elder Abuse
Elder abuse involves intentional acts that cause injury or poses a serious risk of harm to an elderly person. The person that commits elder abuse is usually someone who has a relationship of trust with the vulnerable elderly person, such as a nursing home worker, a professional caregiver, someone placed in charge of the elderly person’s financial affairs, or a family member thrust into the role of caring for an elderly relative. Elder abuse can consist of physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, financial exploitation, neglect, or abandonment.

OWL, The Voice of Midlife and Older Woman, says that in the United States 1-2 million elderly Americans are the victims of elder abuse. People suffering from dementia are at greater risk of becoming abuse victims. In 2007, The Long Term Care Ombudsmen received some 14,000 allegations of nursing home neglect or abuse.

Not only do our elderly deserve to be treated with respect and have their civil rights upheld-which cannot happen if they are being abused or neglected-but mistreating an elderly person increases their fatality risk by 300%.

Signs that your elderly loved one is a victim of abuse or neglect:

• Unexplained bruises, cuts, or broken bones • Injuries or deaths that occurred after an elderly person was not supervised properly • Sudden weight gain or loss • Mood swings or depression
• The elderly person appears fearful or withdrawn or upset for “no good reason”

World Elder Abuse Day, International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse
Elder Abuse: A Women’s Issue, OWL

Related Web Resources:
Nursing Homes, Mass.gov
Nursing Homes in Massachusetts, NursingHomeInfo.com Continue reading

In Brockton Superior Court, Judge Carroll Ball sentenced former Massachusetts nursing home assistant Steven Laroche to a two-year suspended jail sentence for sexually assaulting an elderly person. Laroche had pleaded guilty to the charges of assault and battery.

He was indicted nearly a year ago after another St. Joseph’s Manor Nursing Home assistant reported witnessing him sexually assault a 93-year-old male resident. The patient, who had been diagnosed with dementia and Parkinson’s, is now deceased.

As part of Laroche’s sentencing, he is required to register as a Massachusetts sexual offender and wear an electronic monitoring bracelet. He is not allowed to work as a caregiver for the duration of his probation.

An Associated Press review of the new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ranking system found that Massachusetts nursing homes located in the state’s more affluent areas tended to receive higher ratings for quality than their counterparts in poorer counties.The ranking system rates some 16,000 nursing homes in the United States for quality of care, staffing levels, and health inspection results.

A number of factors were examined when arriving at each home’s rating, including how many patients acquired bedsores during their first three months at a nursing home, the number of injuries sustained in fall accidents, and the number of hours of care each patient received on a daily basis. Nursing homes that provided the best level of care and services received a five star rating, while homes considered to provide well below average care received one star.

17% of the 433 Massachusetts nursing homes that were assessed received 5 stars, while 14% of the state’s nursing homes received 1 star. A closer examination of the data reveals that nursing homes located in poorer parts of the state tended to receive less stars:

• Almost 60% of Massachusetts nursing homes in Middlesex County, considered one of the state’s most affluent areas, received 5 star ratings.

• In Massachusetts’s poorest area, Hampden County, almost 6 out of every 10 US nursing homes received 1 or 2 stars.

• Plymouth County, also a wealthy Massachusetts area, was number 3 among counties with the highest number of 4 or 5 star nursing homes.

• Among the exceptions was Suffolk County, which includes the city of Boston. Massachusetts’s third poorest county had the highest percentage of 5 star nursing homes and the lowest percentage of 1 star ones.

The Medicare and Medicaid ranking system is designed to give prospective residents and their families another way of assessing the quality of care provided at each home. While researching and visiting a nursing home are great ways to make sure that you are choosing to admit your loved one into a long-term care facility where they will receive the best care possible, nursing home abuse and neglect incidents do occur.

Nursing home quality varies by region in Mass., MSNBC.com, January 1, 2009
Nursing Home Compare, Medicare.gov
Related Web Resources:
Nursing Homes, Mass.gov
Nursing Homes in Massachusetts
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In Norfolk Superior Court, Joel K. Logan and Todd Logan, have pleaded guilty to neglecting patients and stealing funds at five nursing homes they used to own. The two men had been charged with medical assistance fraud, larceny, embezzlement, conspiracy, and patient neglect, and they have been ordered to serve five years probation and pay $150,000 in restitution.

The Logans say that not only did they used state Medicaid funds for personal use from January 2001 to June 2003, but they neglected to provide patients with medicine, food, sanitary conditions, and bed linens. They also stole funds from the Pond Meadow Health Care Facility, Logan Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, and the Elihu White Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, took $55,000 in employee wages that had been withheld for 401K retirement funds, and did not pay money they owed for short-term disability and life insurance policies.

The two brothers can never work in healthcare again.

Nursing Home Neglect
It is illegal to abuse or neglect a nursing home patient. Not only are nursing home neglect and abuse punishable by criminal law, but the patient and/or his or her family can sue for damages with the help of an experienced Boston personal injury lawyer.

Nursing home neglect can seriously harm a patient’s already precarious health condition and lead to:
• Bedsores
• Fall injuries • Malnutrition • Illnesses • Weight loss • Death
Examples of nursing home neglect:
• Failure to regularly check on a patient.
• Failure to monitor a patient’s health and treatment.
• Failure to give a nursing home resident his or her medication.
• Failure to feed a resident.
• Not bathing resident.
• Allowing a resident to live in unsanitary health conditions.

Ex-nursing home owners admit fraud, neglect, Boston.com, July 24, 2008

Related Web Resources:

Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Resource Center

Elder Abuse, Helpguide.org
Throughout Massachusetts, please contact our Boston nursing home abuse lawyers for your free consultation.
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Piety Corner Nursing Home, a Waltham, Massachusetts nursing home, has been placed on a federal government list of facilities that have serious issues with patient care. The 34-bed facility must now undergo government reviews more often.

In 2006, Piety Corner was cited for over two dozen violations-eight of which were considered actions that placed patients in immediate danger or harm, including:

• Failing to prevent neglect.
• Failing to prevent abuse.
• Failing to maintain maintenance and housekeeping services.
• Failing to promote and enhance quality of life.

Piety Corner also reportedly has failed to properly notify residents and their family members and physicians of changes in patient care and of any accidents that occurred. In one incident, Piety Corner reportedly failed to quickly notify the doctor of a resident of medical test results.

In 2005, a complaint was filed against the facility for its unnecessary use of physical restraints during medical care. Another complaint was filed because residents were not given sufficient liquids to stay properly hydrated.

Piety Corner must pass garner satisfactory results on three surveys in a row.

Nursing home abuse and neglect is an unfortunate problem that occurs in Massachusetts and the rest of the United States. Residents at nursing homes and other resident care facilities are entitled to a certain quality of medical and personal care. When failure to receive this care leads to abuse or neglect, a nursing home resident may be entitled to personal injury compensation.

Common kinds of abuse and neglect include:

• Medical neglect, including failure to provide proper and timely medical care • Physical neglect, including failure to assist in personal hygiene, create a clean living space, or properly freed or hydrate • Physical assault • Sexual Assault • Overmedication • Unnecessary physical restraints • Unnecessary medical restraints
Patient care in question at nursing home, DailyNewsTribune.com, February 14, 2008
Waltham nursing home added to list of problem facilities, Boston.com, February 12, 2008

Related Web Resources:

Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect

1987 Nursing Home Reform Act

Piety Corner Nursing Home, Hospital-Data.com Continue reading

In Massachusetts, the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center fired seven staff members for administering dozens of electrical shocks to two emotionally disturbed teenagers because a caller pretending to be a supervisor told them to do so.

Six of the fired staff members worked the graveyard shift at the center’s Stoughton group home. A seventh worker worked in video surveillance at the center’s Canton main office. It was his job to monitor activity at the group home through remote surveillance.

According to a state report, the six staff members followed the caller’s orders to awaken teenagers in the middle of the night and shock them, sometimes with their legs and arms tied.

The caller wanted the teenagers punished for their bad behavior that had supposedly been observed through surveillance cameras. Even though the six staff members did not notice this supposed bad behavior, they administered the shock treatments.

Over a nearly three hour time period, starting at 2am, one teenager was shocked 29 times. The other teenager was shocked 77 times.

Other residents at the home woke up to the screaming teenagers and tried to convince the staffers that the victims didn’t do anything wrong. One resident suggested that the caller was a prankster. One of the staff members finally called the main office and was told that no punishments were ordered.

The Rotenberg center is known for its controversial electrical shock treatments. Students at the center are mentally retarded, autistic, or have behavior problems.

Care facilities and their staff are supposed to provide proper care to patients-not abuse or neglect or assault them. All residents of care facilities have legal rights that protect them. If these rights are violated and a patient is injured or killed, a personal injury claim or wrongful death lawsuit may be brought.

Group home fires 7 on staff, Boston.com, December 21, 2007
Prank led school to treat two with shock, Boston.com, December 18, 2007

Related Web Resource:

Judge Rotenberg Educational Center
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Maria Cruz, a former Certified Nursing Assistant, pled guilty to assault and battery of an elderly person that she had been taking care of at a nursing home. As part of Cruz’s probation, Lawrence District Court Judge Barbara Pearson has ordered her to stay away from the victim, the two witnesses, and the Sutton Hill Center Nursing Home.

Cruz is also forbidden from taking care of any elderly person in any way or from ever working in a senior nursing home setting. She also has to undergo an anger management evaluation and 100 hours of community service.

Authorities say that in 2006, Cruz stepped on an 86-year-old patient’s face and swore at her. Two Certified Nursing Assistants witnessed the incident and they reported Cruz, 46, to the DPH (Department of Public Health) and the Attorney General’s Office. She was fired after an investigation and suspension.

A recent Congressional Report says that 1/3rd of the 17,000 nursing homes in the U.S. have been cited for some form of nursing home abuse.

Elder abuse at a nursing home can consist of physical violence, verbal violence, sexual abuse, and emotional violence. Nursing home neglect, where caretakers at a nursing home neglect to take proper care of an elderly patient, is another form of abuse. Staff inattention, overlooking signs of illnesses, not giving a patient timely and proper medical care (medical neglect), and unsanitary or dangerous living conditions, are all forms of nursing home negligence.

Sings of nursing home abuse can consist of severe dehydration, unexplained cuts or bruises, bedsores, and sudden weight loss.

The Nursing Home and Abuse and Neglect Center says that a person may be a victim of emotional or verbal abuse at a nursing home if he or she seems:

• Emotionally upset or agitated • Extremely withdrawn and non-communicative • Exhibits unusual behavior (sucking, biting, rocking)
• Exhibits humiliating, insulting, frightening, or threatening behavior towards family and friends • Wants to be isolated from other people • Ignores family and friends

North Andover Nursing Assistant Pleads Guilty to Assaulting an Elderly Nursing Home Patient, The Office of Massachusetts Attorney General, August 8, 2007
Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect News

Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Resource Center

Related Web Resource:

Information Sources for Elder Law
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