When you leave your loved one in a nursing home, you expect them to be treated with the best of care. With the number of elder abuse cases that happen yearly, it is frightening to imagine that your elderly parent could be facing elder abuse. The results of elder neglect or abuse can be devastating to the victims and their family.
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Many thousands of elderly persons are victims of nursing home abuse and neglect every year in the United States. Nursing home abuse is surprising because these homes are supposed to be regularly inspected by the state and are supposed to live up to certain staffing standards.
Elder abuse can come in several different forms. There is physical abuse which includes not only physical assaults such as hitting or shoving but also the inappropriate use of drugs, restraints, or confinement. Emotional abuse includes intimidation through yelling, threats, humiliation, ridicule, habitual blaming, scape goating, ignoring and terrorizing the elder.
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The incidents of elder abuse, neglect and wrongful death have risen in this country. One of the best ways to protect your loved ones is to be extremely careful when choosing a nursing home. This decision is usually an emotional one and it is also one that all members of the family should partake in, especially the elderly person needing care.
The first step is to determine exactly what level of care your family member needs. Oftentimes the amount of care needed is small and could be provided by a home health aide or in an assisted living facility. The family also needs to determine what the elderly person can afford, what Medicare covers and if there is long-term health insurance or other assets that can be used for this care. A lower priced nursing home is not always a bad one and high priced ones have their share of elder abuse and neglect problems.
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When it comes to the care and protection of the elderly, absolute vigilance is required. If attention laps, something as simple as a bed sore can become infected and even lead to death.
According to the Modesto Bee, Elizabeth Pao and family were awarded $1.1 million dollars for just such an event. Pao’s mother, Frances Tanner, had fallen in March 2005 and broken her hip. Bed sores developed from neglectful care and she was pronounced dead shortly after.
According to the suit filed by the federal government, Johnson & Johnson and two of its subsidiaries paid money, in various forms, to the nation’s largest pharmacy, Omnicare, which dispenses drugs to the elderly and nursing home patients.
The kickbacks were given “to induce the nursing home pharmacy company to purchase and recommend J&J drugs, including the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal.”
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In these times when nursing home abuse and negligence is at an all-time high, it is very important to be armed with pertinent information when you are looking for a nursing home for a loved one. A recent article in U.S. News talks about those nursing homes that are rated as “Special Focus Facility.” The truth is there is nothing good or positive about the word “special” here. A Special Focus Facility is basically a nursing home with a history of negligence or consistently substandard results in health inspections – one that has been tagged for extra monitoring and inspections by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as well as the state where it operates. In other words, you want to stay away from these “special” nursing homes.
How does a nursing home gain this dubious status? It doesn’t happen with a single health deficiency. For a nursing home to be tagged it would have to have three serious problems at three consecutive inspections. If repeat inspections were necessary because the nursing home did not rectify the problem, that becomes a serious issue as well. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services there are about 135 nursing homes on this list. California has six of these homes. Officials say many more nursing homes should be on this list, but aren’t because the federal agency simply does not have the resources or the manpower to go after these homes and conduct these inspections.
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California investigators believe that nursing home negligence may have caused the death of an 83-year-old man, who died from head injuries that were not properly assessed or treated by nursing home staff. According to an Associated Press news report, Lakewood Manor North in Los Angeles received an AA citation – the most severe that the California Department of Public Health issues. The negligence, according to officials, involved a patient who had slipped, fallen and suffered a head injury while trying to move from his bed to a wheelchair in 2007. The resulting head injury was not properly assessed or treated, investigators say. The man ended up dying four days after he fell.
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A recent Los Angeles nursing home accident has caused officials to investigate a Pico Rivera nursing home. The nursing home was fined $100,000 after a wheelchair-bound resident caught on fire and died while trying to light a cigarette in an unsupervised dining room, according to a CBS News report. The California Department of Public Health issued the AA citation and the fine on April 22, 2009 to the Riviera Healthcare Center. The fatal nursing home accident apparently occurred on December 23, 2008 when the resident tried to light a cigarette without anyone present in the dining room.
The victim was burned over 40 percent of his body and died 18 days later. California health officials stated in their report that the nursing home neglected patient safety by failing to come up with a safety plan. Also, nursing home staff did not use a nearby fire blanket and extinguisher to put out the flames.
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A watchdog group, which is tracking nearly 1,600 nursing homes and assisted living facilities in northern California, is saying that it expects to see an increase in California nursing home negligence and abuse statewide. According to a News 10 report, Ombudsman Services of Northern California has lost two-thirds of its staff because of California budget cuts and the program’s administrator, Joan Parks, is saying that she is already seeing evidence of nursing homes and assisted living facilities taking advantage of this lack of oversight.
This is not something that’s happening only in northern California. In October, we reported about the loss of funding at the Orange County Council of Aging. Their ombudsmen have been doing an excellent job of making unannounced visits to local nursing homes and have detected cases of nursing home abuse and negligence. This group lost 55 percent of its program funding for the year and was forced to lay off almost all of its paid part-time field ombudsmen. This happened after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed $3.8 million in state funding for long-term care ombudsman programs across California.
Apparently, even unpaid volunteers are being affected by this cut in funding. Some volunteers say they had to quit because they were no longer being reimbursed for mileage. Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) has co-authored legislation to restore funding for these ombudsmen. AB 392 would direct money to the programs from fines levied against nursing home operators who violate the law. We can only hope that this legislation passes and restores funding to this worthwhile group of people who were rendering invaluable service to California’s seniors and their families.
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An Escondido nursing home has been fined $90,000 after a resident apparently choked to death at lunch. According to a news report on San Diego’s Channel 6, Escondido Care Center was also cited on March 12, 2009 for poor treatment and supervision of its patients. The California Department of Health states in its report that the man was supposed to be on a strict diet because he had trouble chewing and swallowing. But he was eating a lunch of beef with barbecue sauce, mashed potatoes, steamed cabbage and carrots last November when he coughed several times and slumped over in his wheelchair. Nursing home staff members were not able to revive him. Escondido Care Center has apparently appealed this citation.
My heart goes out to the family of this nursing home negligence victim. It is no doubt a tragic, heartbreaking event for this man’s loved ones who believed that they had entrusted him to the care of professionals. They probably never doubted for a second that he would receive anything but the best level of care and attention at this San Diego County facility.
Unfortunately, nursing home negligence and abuse occurs far more commonly and frequently across the country. A lot of cases involving California nursing home negligence and abuse are due to understaffing and the lack of qualified, trained caregivers in these facilities. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in a 2000 report, found out that about 54 percent of the nation’s nursing homes were understaffed. The report also found that, at the time of the study, residents in 31 percent of the nation’s nursing homes were receiving care for only about 12 minutes a day from registered nurses.
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