California Injury Blog
A Palm Desert nursing home is facing a $100,000 state fine and the severest AA citation after a patient reportedly died from an infection caused by a perforated colon. According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, California Department of Public Health investigators issued the citation against The Springs at the Calotta, a 59-bed facility, for failing to identify and monitor the medical needs of an 87-year-old woman who suffered from a severe case of constipation for 24 days.
The woman died in June 2006, but it took investigators about a year and a half to obtain all the documentation and conduct internal investigations, the news report said. The victim was admitted into the nursing home on June 5 to recover from a broken pelvis. Apparently, nursing home administrators knew that she was constipated when she came in, but did nothing to relieve her problems. She eventually died June 29, less than a month after she was brought to the nursing home.
The nursing home failed to properly document the woman’s treatment for constipation and steps taken to help her. Can you imagine how the woman’s loved ones must feel about the inhumane way in which she has been neglected by this nursing home? When family members drop off loved ones in nursing homes, in most cases, it’s done with guilt and desperation. They shell out thousands of dollars each month to make sure that their elderly or ailing relatives get quality care, which they cannot provide in their homes.
Nursing home negligence and abuse is becoming a huge problem of epidemic proportions in the United States. With more and more people getting admitted and millions of baby boomers headed in that direction, this is a scary scenario. If state investigators are so slow to investigate such a serious case of negligence, who is monitoring these facilities on a regular basis? Who is making sure that nursing homes are not understaffed and that the staff being employed to provide care is being adequate.
As personal injury attorneys who represent victims of nursing home abuse and negligence, it makes us mad every time we see or hear news about it. Our goal is to get justice for our clients and make these facilities pay for their wrongdoing. The neglect is born out of greed – nursing homes under staff to build on their profits. So they put their greed over the greater good and profits before the people they get paid to care for. We hope the victim’s family sues this facility and makes them pay for what they did to this innocent, helpless woman.