A 76-year-old patient at the Ridgecrest Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in DeLand died after falling to the floor and lying there for 12 hours. Barbara Fasold fell out of her bed at approximately 5:00 a.m. and a fractured both legs and her shoulder, and was not discovered on the floor…
All licensed nursing homes in California are licensed and certified by the California Department of Public Health, which conducts an annual inspection of every licensed skilled nursing facility in the state. In addition, the DPH is charged with the duty to investigate complaints of neglect or abuse, and issue the…
In their ongoing series on nursing oversight in the State of California, Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein of ProPublica are out with another story about California’s shortcomings in regulating healthcare professionals. Weber and Ornstein reveal that the national database that tracks dangerous or incompetent caregivers is missing serious disciplinary actions…
The nursing home roommate from hell. A former San Diego nursing home resident was sentenced to 19 years in jail yesterday for setting a series of fires at two local nursing homes while she was a resident. According to an investigation, Mary Wilson tried to kill her nursing home roommate…
In 2007, Dr. David Graham, a drug safety expert with the FDA, testified before Congress and stated that approximately 15,000 people die each year in U.S. nursing homes from the off-label use of anti-psychotic drugs. Off-label use is the use of the drug for a condition it was not intended.…
A few times a year we hear news stories of Alzheimer’s sufferers wandering away from their homes and becoming lost. Those stories end one of two ways, and unfortunately, too often the ending is not a happy one. These sad stories have created a cottage industry for nursing home providers.…
Nursing home abuse and neglect lawyers in California often lament the state’s weak enforcement of bad nursing homes. The California Department of Public Health, due primarily to inadequate funding, rarely provides the strong oversight of California’s 1,200 or so licensed skilled nursing facilities. As a result, bad nursing homes operate…
U.S. News and World Report, famous for its “best” lists, is out with a ranking of the country’s best nursing homes. There are approximately 16,000 individuals living in U.S. nursing homes, and approximately 3.2 million will spend time in one each year. Here at Walton Law Firm we get asked…
According to new research from Brown University, elderly Hispanics are more likely to live in inferior nursing homes than their white counterparts. In an article out in the January 10 edition of Health Affairs, a team of researchers takes the first comprehensive look at the types of nursing facilities Hispanic…
A certified nursing assistant working in a San Diego nursing home is being held on charges of rape and elder abuse after being caught having sex with a nursing home resident. According to reports, an employee of the El Dorado Care Center in El Cajon walked into the room of…