FIGHTING BACK – Pt. 2 – Nursing Home Patients and Their Families, Victims of Abuse, Report and Seek Counsel Representing Victims

Aurora nursing home sued again after resident beats wheelchair-bound 92-year-old woman

Jury awarded other plaintiff beaten by same resident $3.6 million

An Aurora nursing home is being sued for a second time over allegations that a resident with a history of violence continues to injure other residents and that the facility does not have enough staff to properly care for the Alzheimer’s and dementia patients who live there.

The lawsuit filed last week in Arapahoe County District Court accuses Renew Saddle Rock of putting its financial goals over residents’ safety by under-staffing the home.

In October, an Arapahoe County jury awarded a former resident a $3.6 million verdict after he was beaten by a fellow resident, who has been identified as “Anne B.” Two months after the verdict, the nursing home owners changed the facility’s name to Renew Saddle Rock from Peregrine Senior Living at Aurora, the lawsuit said.

The new lawsuit was filed by Denver attorneys Jerome Reinan, Jordana Gingrass and Beth Dombroski on behalf of Joanna Dryva, whose mother, Maria Pallman, was injured in the attack. Dryva is seeking more than $100,000 in damages against Renew and the nursing home’s corporate owners, First Phoenix-Aurora of Wisconsin and Peregrine Management of Colorado.

The latest lawsuit accuses Anne B. of pummeling Pallman, a 92-year-old, wheelchair-bound woman who also suffers from dementia. On May 29, Anne B. hit Pallman in the face as she sat in a wheelchair in a hallway, the lawsuit said. Pallman now suffers from anxiety, and recurring headaches that she didn’t have before the assault, the lawsuit said.

The nursing home has refused to turn over surveillance footage of the assault, it said.

RELATED: These Colorado nursing homes were poorly rated and eligible for federal oversight. Until this week, nobody knew.

Attempts to reach the director of Renew and the facility’s owners were unsuccessful.

The lawsuit also accuses former nursing director, Britny Otto, of violating state law when she denied that Anne B. had assaulted a staff member during testimony about the first lawsuit.

“Despite actual knowledge that it was understaffed, Otto and Peregrine aggressively marketed Peregrine as having higher staffing than its competitors, as well as a better activities program than its competitors,” the lawsuit said. Otto had failed to report Anne B.’s assault on a staff member to police or the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment as required by Colorado law, the lawsuit said.

Renew Saddle Rock’s website said the memory care facility offers “all of the services and amenities that provide residents and families complete peace of mind, while transcending the status quo with experiential innovations like custom jewelry design and woodworking with local artists or private concerts with wine and cheese pairings.”

Peregrine actually staffed the nursing home with only one worker for up to 28 dementia patients during night shifts and on weekends, the lawsuit said.

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• Jury awards dementia patient $3.6 million after he was bitten, assaulted by another resident at Aurora nursing home

• At least one death, “hundreds of severe infections” linked to Porter hospital’s use of contaminated surgical instruments, lawsuit alleges

Dryva would not have admitted her mother to the nursing home if she had been told about the first assault and the fact that Anne B. was still living in the home, the lawsuit said.

Anne B. has also been accused of assaulting a third Renew resident, who was identified as “Josephine,” and a worker who quit because of the attack, the lawsuit said. The nursing home did not report the assaults to law enforcement or licensing authorities, the lawsuit said.

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FIGHTING BACK! VictimS of Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect, Make it Public and File Suit Against Owners [video]

Making the Case | The rights of nursing home residents and families

by FOX56 NEWSROOM

Thursday, June 20th 2019

[VIDEO]

Unfortunately, nursing home abuse is all too common, and many cases go unreported.

However, there are standards of care that nursing homes must meet. If they fail to meet these standards, victims and their families can sue in civil court.

Nursing home abuse can involve intentional physical violence, sexual assault, psychological abuse, financial exploitation, and neglect. While some forms of abuse are obvious, others are harder to detect.

Signs of nursing home abuse or neglect may include:

Broken bones, bruising or cuts

Frequent infections

Dehydration

Mood swings and emotional outbursts

Refusal to eat or take medications Or

Unexplained weight loss

If you believe your loved one has been abused or neglected by a nursing home or assisted living facility, visit munley.com

To Toomey Report and the 400 Worst Nursing Homes – Time to Compare Ownership Interests… to Come

The List of the 400 Worst Nursing Homes

Nursing Homes – South Carolina – Medicare Eligible, Poor Oversight, Profit Over Care

https://www.thestate.com/news/state/article199818169.html

Columbia nursing home among 6 in SC with ‘persistent record of poor care’

Six South Carolina nursing homes, including one in Columbia, were publicly identified as being eligible for additional oversight by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

PruittHealth Blythewood, located at 1075 Heather Green Drive, was listed as a special focus facility candidate for its “persistent record of poor care,” according to a report released by two Pennsylvania senators.

After two investigations into Pennsylvania’s nursing homes by PennLive, Sen. Bob Casey and Sen. Pat Toomey teamed up to demand the list of special focus facility candidates and released the list publicly on June 3. Previously, only the names of special focus facility program participants were made public.

The secrecy undermines the federal commitment to transparency for families struggling to find nursing homes for loved ones and raises questions about why the names of some homes are not disclosed while others are publicly identified, according to the two senators.

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In South Carolina, Riverside Health and Rehab in North Charleston is a special focus facility. Five other nursing homes are listed as candidates for the program:

▪ Commander Nursing Center in Florence City

▪ Blue Ridge of Sumter

▪ Life Care Center of Hilton Head

▪ Compass Post Acute Rehabilitation in Conway

▪ PruittHealth-Blythewood in Columbia

The Columbia nursing home that can house about 120 residents, according to its Medicare.gov profile, was fined over $100,000 in 2017. In September 2017, federal regulators slapped a $99,267 penalty on PruittHealth-Blythewood. That was after the facility was forced to pay $4,237 in March of that year.

The Columbia nursing home’s overall rating on Medicare.gov’s Nursing Home Compare site is “much below average.” PruittHealth-Blythewood received a one-star rating and five health citations at an inspection on Oct. 5.

During that visit, inspectors reported meeting a resident with “long, dirty fingernails,” who was not helped to brush his teeth and had only three documented showers in the previous three months. Several other residents also received infrequent documented showers, the report said.

Other residents reported hours-long delays when they asked for help, even for something as simple as getting out of bed in the morning. Those were attributed in part to the facility being short-staffed, according to the inspection report.

PruittHealth-Blythewood also received an “average” rating — three stars — for quality of resident care and for staffing, based on the average number of residents per day, registered nurse hours per resident per day and other criteria.

The facility fell below average when rated on quality of care for long-stay residents. According to the most recent information from Medicare.gov about the nursing home, 7.8% of long-stay residents at PruittHealth-Blythewood experience one or more falls with major injury — double the national average. A high percentage (13.3%) of high-risk long-stay patients also experience pressure ulcers, the report says.

 

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Nursing Homes and Poor Patient Care, Minnesota Homes in Need of Oversight

https://cbsloc.al/2RhJQT1

Feds Say 11 Minnesota Nursing Homes Need Greater Oversight

 

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Eleven Minnesota nursing homes are on a list of facilities cited by federal officials for patterns of health and safety violations.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Aging released a list of 400 nursing homes across the country that are in need of tighter oversight. The facilities were identified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press says two nursing homes in Rochester and Red Wing already receive twice the normal amount of inspections and risk losing federal funding if problems are not addressed.

The 11 facilities identified for stricter oversight are just 3 percent of Minnesota’s nursing homes. The state has about 375 nursing facilities that serve 40,000 residents.

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Nursing Home Oversight Failures – Part (how many?) Long Beach, CA Among the Poorest

Two Long Beach facilities named among poorest quality nursing homes in the nation

by Kelly Puente in News

The patient from Long Beach Healthcare Center was rushed to a hospital in August 2018 with an abdomen so distended from constipation that it looked as if she had “three soccer balls inside of her stomach,” according to state records.

She died 12 days later due to respiratory failure and severe sepsis from a urinary tract infection and pneumonia. A state investigation later found that the staff at Long Beach Healthcare Center made several critical errors, including not properly monitoring the woman’s deteriorating condition and failing to report that she had not had bowel movement for seven days.

The Wrigley-area facility in February was issued a rare “AA” citation—the state’s most serious violation when it’s determined that a nursing home directly caused a resident’s death.

Long Beach Healthcare Center is one of two Long Beach facilities that are named on a federal list of nearly 400 nursing homes across the country with serious ongoing health, safety or sanitary problems.

The list, released this month by U.S. senators, notes facilities with a “persistent record of poor care” that haven’t previously been released to the public, according to a Senate report.

The fact that the list has not been released to the public in previous years undermines the federal commitment to ensure transparency for families struggling to find nursing homes for loved ones and raises questions about why the names of some homes are not disclosed while others are publicly identified, according to two senators who released the report.

“We’ve got to make sure any family member or any potential resident of a nursing home can get this information, not only ahead of time but on an ongoing basis,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who along with Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., issued the report.

About 1.3 million Americans live in nursing homes; they are cared for in more than 15,700 facilities. The senators’ report noted that problem nursing homes on both lists account for about 3 percent of the total.

In California, which has the country’s largest concentration of nursing homes, 34 facilities were on the list. Overall, California’s nursing homes average about 12.5 health citations, compared to 7.9 nationwide.

Records show that Long Beach Healthcare Center and the other facility on the federal list—Windsor Gardens Convalescent Center of Long Beach—have a history of health citations, according to the Nursing Home Compare website, which is run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Long Beach Healthcare Center has 39 citations—more than three times the state average. Windsor Gardens has 22 citations, including one from July when a resident was found restrained in bed and soiled with feces and urine.

Both facilities are rated one of out five stars on the federal website, indicating they are “much below average.”

Jon Peralez, an administrator for Windsor Gardens, in a statement said the facility acknowledges that is it on the list and will “continue to make improvements that maintain and improve the quality of care.” A representative of Long Beach Healthcare Center could not be reached for comment.

Michael Connors, a spokesman for California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, said the federal ratings provide only a snapshot of problem facilities because they include only federal sanctions, not state violations recorded by state inspectors.

The problem in California, he said, is much worse.

“There are hundreds of poor-quality nursing homes here in California,” he said. “This list only identifies a handful of them.”

Connors said the problem is due to understaffing, poor oversight and a complicated web of “unscrupulous” companies that are allowed to own chains of nursing homes. Connors said for-profit entities have been able to acquire nursing homes even without state approval.

Records show that Windsor Gardens in Long Beach is owned by Blythe/Windsor Country Park Healthcare Center LLC, while Long Beach Healthcare Center’s owner is listed as Long Beach Healthcare Center LLC.

Problem facilities that have faced multiple sanctions are rarely closed, Connors said.

“The state almost never closes them, in fact not only does it not close them, it allows the operators who are responsible for this poor care to continue to operate and acquire more nursing homes,” he said. “It’s really a troubling system.”

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The Abuse and Neglect of the Elderly in Nursing Facilities – Failure to Report and Failure of Oversight

Health Workers Still Aren’t Alerting Police About Likely Elder Abuse, Reports Find

NPR [Excertps reprinted from the original to see the original click here.]

    

Mary Smyth Getty Images

Two reports from the federal government have determined that many cases of abuse or neglect of elderly patients that are severe enough to require medical attention are not being reported to enforcement agencies by nursing homes or health workers — even though such reporting is required by law.

 

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It can be hard to quantify the problem of elder abuse. Experts believe that many cases go unreported. And Wednesday morning, their belief was confirmed by two new government studies.

The research, conducted and published by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, finds that in many cases of abuse or neglect severe enough to require medical attention, the incidents have not been reported to enforcement agencies, though that’s required by law.

One of the studies focuses solely on the possible abuse of nursing home residents who end up in emergency rooms. The report looks at claims sent to Medicare in 2016for treatment of head injuries, body bruises, bed sores and other diagnoses that might indicate physical abuse, sexual abuse or severe neglect.

Gloria Jarmon, deputy inspector general for audit services, says her team found that nursing homes failed to report nearly 1 in 5 of these potential cases to the state inspection agencies charged with investigating them.

“Some of the cases we saw, a person is treated in an emergency room [and] they’re sent back to the same facility where they were potentially abused and neglected,” Jarmon says.

But the failure to record and follow up onpossible cases of elder abuse is not just the fault of the nursing homes. Jarmon says that in five states where nursing home inspectors did investigate and substantiate cases of abuse, “97% of those had not been reported to local law enforcement as required.”

State inspectors of nursinghomes who participated in the study appeared to be confused about when they were required to refer cases to law enforcement, Jarmon notes. One state agency said that it contacted the police only for what it called “the most seriousabuse cases.”

Elder abuse occurs in many settings — not just nursing homes. The second study looked at Medicare claims for the treatment of potential abuse or neglect of older adults, regardless of where it took place. The data were collected on incidents occurring between January of 2015 and June of 2017.

The federal auditors projected that, of more than 30,000 potential cases, health care providers failed to report nearly a third of the incidents to law enforcement or Adult Protective Services, even though the law requires them to make such reports.

“It’s very important that the first person who notices this potential abuse and neglect reports it, because then they can begin the investigative process to determine if abuse or neglect occurred,” says Jarmon. “And if it’s not reported, it can’t be tracked.”

The HHSreport says that Medicare could do a better job of analyzing the data it has on hand. It recommends that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the health care program for older Americans, should periodically examine claims for treatment, looking for diagnoses that suggest possible abuse or neglect, as well as where and when those cases occur.

“You have to be able to get the data to see how bad the problem is,” says Jarmon, “so that “everybody who can take action has it.”

However, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which pays for much of the health care for seniors and provides guidance on the reporting required ofhealth care workers and health care facilities, has rejected most of the reports’ recommendations.

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