Articles Posted in Elder Care

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Are nursing homes in California abiding by federal regulations for reporting allegations of elder abuse or neglect?  According to a recent report released by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), not all facilities are reporting incidents of nursing home abuse.

Reporting Requirements and IncrHHSeasing Rates of Elder Abuse

The HHS report emphasized that about five million elderly Americans (or ten percent of the elderly population) sustain injuries from physical abuse, neglect, and financial exploitation.  However, these crimes are not always reported.

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A recent article in the Examiner alleges that Scott Phipps of Phisco Fiduciary committed elder abuse against a senior conservatee, Elinor Frerichs.  Elder advocates argue that Scott Phipps kept Frerichs “confined and isolated” at Lakeside Park, her asfile0001748266226sisted living facility in Oakland.  If true, the fiduciary may have violated the rights provided to conservatees in the state of California.

Conservatee’s Rights in California

According to the Notice of Conservatee’s Rights, our state makes clear that, when an elderly person becomes a conservatee, they do not lose all rights to handle decisions.  Indeed, “he or she does not necessarily lose the right to take part in important decisions affecting his or her property and way of life.”  The conservatee is entitled to “ask questions and to express concerns and complaints about the conservatorship and the actions of his or her conservator.”

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History of the Star Rating System

A recent New York Times article discussed the danger of trusting the Medicare star rating system, providing as an example a five-star nursing home facility in California with a history of elder neglect violations. Last week, we discussed the star rating system and the Rosewood nursing home in the Sacramento area. In sum, the rating system is not helping consucohdranknmomprknsnsmers in the way it claims. How did this rating system rise to prominence, and why are so many Americans willing to trust it without additional investigation?

According to the article, the five-star rating system began in 2007, when Oregon Senator Ron Wyden posed the following question at a congressional hearing: why is it easier to shop for washing machines than to select a nursing home? Two years later, Medicare officials developed the  star rating system, “a move that was applauded by consumer groups, who hope that more transparency would lead to greater accountability.”

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Five-Star Nursing Homes May Not the Best Indicator of Care

Are Medicare star ratings good predictors for the quality of care at nursing homes?  According to a recent article in the New York Times, a facility with a five-star rating may not be what one would expect.  In fact, many five-star facilities have receiIMG_29490008ved fines for injuries related to nursing home neglect.

Rosewood Post-Acute Rehab, a nursing home located in a Sacramento suburb, received a five-star rating from Medicare.  The nursing home “bears all the touches of a luxury hotel, including high ceilings, leather club chairs, and paintings of bucolic landscapes.”  According to the article, getting a five-star rating—the highest possible—is not easy.  Only about one-fifth of all nursing home in the U.S., about 3,000 total, hold this distinction.

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Many of us have heard about assisted living facility reforms pending before the California legislature, as well as those aimed specifically at residential care facilities for the elderly (RCFEs).  But are those reforms sufficient to ensure that California seniors are safe from elder abuse?  According to a recent story from KQED’s State of Health, many elder justice advocates in California do not believe the reforms are going to do enough.

Recent History of Elder Abuse in San Diego

According to Deborah Schoch, an advocate with the California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting, the number of assisting living facilities in our state essentially doubled over the last 25 years.  For whom are these faciwoman-65675_1280lities designed?  According to Schoch, they are intended for older, healthy adults who are “relatively independent.” Yet many of these facilities have taken in patients who require much more extensive levels of care, and assisted living facilities “are not designed to deliver skilled nursing care.”

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It’s no secret that California assisted living facilities have been in the national news due to reports of nursing home abuse and neglect.  Indeed, over the last year, elder rights advocates have emphasized the need to make information about nursing homes and assisted living facilities readily available to older adults and their loved ones.  Without such information at our fingertips, how will we know which facilities are safe and can provide a high quality of care for our elderly parents?  According to a recent story from KPBS San Diego Public Radio, this kind of information remains pretty difficult to access.

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Lacking Internet Information About California Assisted Living Facilities

According to the recent KPBS story, it’s not easy to access information about the quality of nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Southern California.  For example, Lorid Macri’s mother suffers from dementia, she told KPBS.  At the beginning, Macri cared for her mother.  However, the stress of caring for a dementia patient became “overwhelming.”  And when Macri herself needed hospital care, she realized she needed to find an assisted living facility where her mother could receive quality care.

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With more than two out of five Americans caring for their aging parents—many of whom do so because they cannot afford to pay for other elder assistance—it’s often difficult to find time for both work and caregiving.  Indeed, according to a recent article in Forbes, many children who act as caregivers worry that, without assistance from their employers, their aging parents may face nursing home neglect.  Lately, however, more employers are “now providing help for employees who feel that they just have to ‘suck it up’ in managing this care and their careers.”

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What’s the relationship between elder abuse and workplace assistance?  Many factors could play into this correlation, including:

  •      When employees don’t have time to properly locate elder care resources, they make uninformed decisions about nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, or even in-home nurses.  Help from an employer can mean the difference between a care facility with a strong patient record and one with a history of nursing home abuse violations.
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A recent article in Reuters reported that the mayor of Los Angeles has declared his support for “a new state law barring public agencies from refusing job applications from people convicted of a crime.”  But could such a law place residents in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities at greater risk of nursing home abuse and neglect?

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No Outright Criminal Background Checks for Employees?

The California law isn’t intended to put California residents at risk, but rather to encourage social rehabilitation.  According to Reuters, Garcetti’s support of the law comes with a deep concern “that millions of people who have been to prison, particularly from minority communities, have little prospect of landing a job once they admit to a conviction.”  The law isn’t just for nursing homes or other care facilities for older adults.  Rather, it’s part of a larger movement to make criminal background checks less of a priority at the start of an interviewing process at many public agencies across the state of California.

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We live in an age of technology, yet the elder care industry doesn’t seem to have taken notice.  According to a recent article in Forbes, the internet and other digital tools may be able to improve the quality of elder care, and to attend to matters of elder abuse and neglect across the country.  We mentioned a recent story about elder financial abuse and online mapping.  This is only one of the tools that may help our older loved ones in the years to come.

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Taking care of our elderly loved ones will be especially important in the coming years as the large number of Americans who make up the baby boomer generation grow old and require care in assisted living facilities and nursing homes.  While none of us likes to believe that nursing home neglect is a problem that can affect our loved ones, recent news stories throughout California suggest that elder abuse is a problem that afflicts many people.  As a result, it’s important to contact a nursing home abuse attorney if you suspect that your elderly loved one has been the victim of nursing home neglect.

High Costs of Elder Care

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Old Woman

As many California residents know, our state has made national news over the last year for concerns about nursing home negligence and nursing home abuse.  A recent article in the Sacramento Bee reported that Los Angeles County public health officials, “in an effort to reduce California’s backlog of health and safety complaints at nursing homes,” might have urged inspectors “to close cases without fully investigating them.”  Internal memos sent between managers, inspectors, and supervisors from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health suggest that these quick and potentially harmful case closures are part of an effort called the “Complaint Workload Clean Up Project,” and it has been in effect “since at least the summer of 2012.”

What does this mean for elderly nursing home residents?  In short, complaints at nursing homes and nursing facilities in Los Angeles County might not have been adequately investigated, and county supervisors could be held liable for injuries that occurred.  Do you have a loved one who resides at a nursing facility in Southern California?  At the Walton Law Firm, our California nursing home abuse attorneys have years of experience handling elder law claims and can speak with you today.

Nursing Home Residents at Risk of Inattention in Southern California

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