Articles Posted in Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect

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According to the Orange County Register, local officials believe that a 28-year-old Riverside resident named David Moreno may have assaulted numerous victims while working as a maintenance worker at Emeritus Senior Living in Yorba Linda. Officials are asking if anyone has information regarding the matter, to please contact the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

Moreno is already facing a felony sexual battery on an institutional victim charge and a felony sexual penetration by a foreign object of an incompetent victim charge. These acts allegedly occurred in June or July of 2012 when Moreno went into the room of a resident suffering from dementia.

Moreno plead guilty and is free on a $100,000 bail.

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One of the rights addressed in the Nursing Home Residents’ Bill of Rights relates to the Quality of Life in the nursing home. An individual’s quality of life should not be diminished because he or she resides in a nursing home. Now, an individual’s opportunities to engage in all of the typical social activities in the community might decline because of health related issues, but the individual must still be permitted to engage in activities within the nursing home and community that he or she is medically and financially able to engage in.xmasinnursinghome.jpg

There are a couple of specific clauses addressing the quality of life in nursing home:

A resident must be allowed to choose and participate in activities that he or she likes provided that the activities are part of his or her plan of care. (HSC 1599.1(d): 42CFR 483.15(b)(1). Clearly the nursing home medical staff will have a say in which activities a resident participates in especially if the activities involve physical activity. The nursing home has a duty to care for the residents and ensure their safety so there is some limitation on activities. However, residents cannot be forced to engage in activities that they do not wish to engage in.

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A resident of a nursing home is no different than any other citizen in the United States when it comes to his or her rights and protections. Living in a nursing facility does not mean you give up your rights despite the new and oftentimes more controlled environment, as opposed to living independently. Each nursing home must inform residents of their rights and provide a written description of those legal rights. They must do so in a manner or language that the resident comprehends. Residents must be given the written description of their rights prior to admission and must acknowledge in writing that they received them.

Money is a topic addressed in a patient’s rights. According to the Federal Government, residents have the right to manage their own money or to choose someone to do if for them.

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This is straightforward, but as with anything that involves money it can get complicated. Residents can deposit funds with the nursing home and ask that the nursing home hold the funds for them. Before doing so, the resident must sign a written statement authorizing the nursing home to hold the funds. A resident may also ask that the nursing home manage and account for personal funds, but the written authorization is again needed here. The nursing home must give the resident access to any bank accounts or funds that it is holding for the resident. Residents may take advantage of this service, but they are not required to deposit personal funds with the nursing home.

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Glendale attorney, Russ Balisok, alleges on behalf of his clients California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, in a new lawsuit, that state regulators allow nursing home companies to siphon money away from patient care and send it to the wallets of the corporations that manage the facilities.

Current state law allows nursing homes to outsource their management to third party corporations. The company that owns the nursing facility can shop around different management companies and pay them a fee to control the day to day operations. The management company designates a portion of its pay towards managing the facility and another portion as a management fee. The management company also receives a portion of the revenues from the home(s) it operates. These agreements are state approved agreements.

Balisok argues that the percentage the management companies takes off the top deprives the nursing homes of vital revenue needed to ensure quality care and services for the patients. The management companies do not operate for the good of the patients, but instead collect money off the top of the revenues and run the nursing facilities for as low a cost as possible.

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An article in The Modesto Bee reported yesterday that Donna Darlene Palmer, former head nurse at a Placerville nursing home, will stand trial for felony elder abuse. Palmer and Rebecca Smith are the two nurses criminally charged by the California Attorney General for their involvement in the death of a 77-year-old Cameron Park woman. Palmer was the director of nursing at the time of the incident and Smith was one of her subordinates.

If you follow our Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Blog, the name Johnnie Esco may sound familiar. Four and a half years ago, Johnnie Esco died at the age of 77 as a result of what her family and El Dorado County prosecutors believe was a case of elder abuse. Don Esco, Johnnie’s now deceased husband was a central figure in our previous blog. Mr. Esco pressed for criminal charges ever since his wife died in 2008.

Attorney General Kamala D. Harris recently announced plans to use three specialized teams comprised of healthcare professionals and investigators to increase its efforts to investigate and prosecute instances of criminal elder abuse in care facilities. Mr. Esco’s persistence over the last four years certainly played a role in bringing about more criminal investigations against nursing homes and their employees.

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The Sacramento Business Journal reported today on a new website that the California Department of Insurance launched in order to help educate California seniors. The article highlights a few aspects of the new site called “Senior Gateway”, but once you visit the site, you see that it has a lot to offer to not only seniors, but their families, caregivers and representatives as well.

Here are a few bullet points outlined by the Sacramento Business Journal for what “Senior Gateway” offers:

*Avoiding and reporting abuse and neglect by in-home caregivers or in facilities

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A vast majority of the public has little if any knowledge regarding whether or not he or she has a claim for damages in the event of an accident. Often, the mentality of injured individuals is simply, “I’m hurt. I want money. Now who can I go after?” The key term that is thrown around a lot, but is not always completely understood, is negligence. The concept of negligence is the key to a claim for damages if you or someone you love is injured in a nursing home. Negligence is based on the theory that individuals in society must act in a specific responsible manner to ensure that lack of care does not negatively impact the society around them. The elements of a claim for negligence are first nature for attorneys, but are helpful to know for other individuals as well. Knowing these elements will not only help clarify a situation in which you think you might have a claim, but it will also enlighten you as to your own actions and responsibilities in daily life, both at work and at home. The elements that must be present in a claim for damages based on negligence are Duty, Breach, Causation, and Damages.

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Everyone has certain duties or responsibilities built into their daily lives. You can have a duty to act a certain way or a duty to not act a certain way. The staff members at a nursing home have a duty to care for the individuals living at the facility. There are certain actions they must take to care for the patients such as checking for bed sores and making sure medications are administered. On the other hand, they are not to engage in abusive behavior or neglectful practices. Certain individuals such as healthcare providers have heightened levels of responsibility due to their profession.

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The recent sentencing of a former nursing home administrator from a Lake Isabella facility is sure to send shockwaves throughout the nursing home community. Channel 17 KGET news recently reported that Pamela Ott, a former nursing home administrator, was sentenced to three years probation and 300 hours of community service for the actions committed by lower ranking staff while under her watch and her subsequent lack of action to prevent further crimes. The news station reported that this is the first time in the country that an administrator was held criminally responsible for the administration of pyschotropic medications.

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The facts of the case paint Ott not as someone committing criminal acts, but instead as someone who failed to respond to criminal actions. Because of Ott’s failure to act, eight residents of the home were seriously injured and three of those died. From August 2006 to August 2007, these eight residents were inappropriately medicated by lower ranking staff in order to keep them quiet and subdued. Ott failed to monitor the medicating practices of the staff and then later failed to investigate these incidents after they were reported to her. She received complaints about nursing director Gwen Hughes’ abusive actions at the home, but ignored those complaints and instructed the employees to follow the director’s instructions. Ott was told by staff members that residents were being “forcefully restrained and injected with medications” according to The Bakersfield Californian, but she failed to do anything about it. Ott plead no contest to a felony count of conspiracy to commit an act injurious to public health according to the report. Ott’s plea deal resulted in three years probation and 300 hours of community service. If she had fought the charges and had been convicted on all counts, she could have faced 20 years or more in prison.

Our San Diego Elder Law Attorneys point to this regretful situation as additional evidence that both residents of nursing homes and their family and friends need to keep a careful watch over the conditions within nursing homes and the actions of the staff. In this instance, employees of the nursing home were using abusive tactics involving restraints and medication in order to subdue and control the residents. The evidence presented showed that this behavior was reported, but the nursing home administrator failed to handle the complaints appropriately, leading to additional instances of abuse and the resulting mistreatment of the side effects of the abuse. Three residents died. Our Southern California nursing home abuse lawyers agree with the prosecution in making a resounding statement that this type of behavior should not go unpunished.

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NBC San Diego recently did a story about the ProPublica online research tool that allows prospective nursing home residents and their families to investigate local nursing homes. As part of the story, two legal cases of nursing home abuse were profiled, including one from Walton Law Firm. Attorney Randy Walton, whom NBC San Diego describes as “an expert in nursing home abuse,” advises nursing home residents and their families to trust their “intuition”, and to be a “squeaky wheel” when necessary to ensure proper care.

The story can be watched here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhtGRfxI8bQ

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Many of us have heard tales of elder nursing home patients wandering beyond facility bounds—only to be found hours later by police or local citizens. Sometimes, nursing home staff have no idea that the individual was even gone. There are other stories, including the inspections done by Operation Guardians, which tell of horrific conditions. Of course, these events beg a multitude of questions: Are these isolated incidents or based on any series of patterns? How often do this occur?

Well, now ProPublica has an app for that.

Yesterday ProPublica, a non-profit, New York City-based corporation, is launching Nursing Home Inspect—a tool that allows members of the public to an easier access to data found in nursing home inspections conducted throughout the nation. Drawing on government reports posted online last month, the app has an easily searchable database of recent nursing home inspections, most completed since January 2011. That massive catalog includes nearly 118,000 deficiencies cited against 14,565 homes, though ProPublica intends to add more each month as new reports become available. This tool, unlike anything before allows individuals to analyze in-depth nursing homes throughout the Unite States.

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