On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Information on Friday, May 18, 2012
This week is "National Nursing Home Week" -- an annual campaign designed to raise public awareness about the important role nursing home facilities play in our society and to show respect for the lives and contributions of caregivers, volunteers, residents and family members alike. It's also a refreshingly wonderful opportunity for us to write about a nursing home story that doesn't involve some of the worst aspects of human nature.
In the course of our practice as a law firm, we have met many remarkable residents of West Virginia nursing homes and just as many exceptional individuals who have worked in or cared for people in the nursing home context. We've also come across some excellent facilities committed to providing quality care and to honoring the trust that has placed in them by others.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Neglect on Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Despite more regulation and greater awareness of the problem, incidents of abuse and neglect continue to plague nursing homes in West Virginia and throughout the United States. While those failings are never excusable and always ugly, every now and then a real word horror story of nursing home neglect seems to lower the bar further than previously thought possible by even the most jaded observers.
In a press release issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier this month, details about another one of "those stories" came to light following the precedent-setting fraud trial and conviction of a nursing home owner whose residents had been forced to live in deplorable conditions for several years while he pocketed much of the nearly $33 million in Medicare and Medicaid payments he received for their care.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Abuse on Saturday, May 12, 2012
Nursing home directors and staff members can't hope to protect their residents from every conceivable type of harm. They do, however, have a legal responsibility to protect residents from known dangers and to report alleged incidents of abuse to state authorities, physicians and the families of alleged victims. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen.
The story we want to discuss today isn't about a nursing home abuse case from West Virginia, but it does involve an administrator who's now facing potential license sanctions for his response to a series of sexual assaults that occurred in the Midwestern nursing home he still manages four years ago.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Abuse on Thursday, May 10, 2012
West Virginia nursing homes are subject to numerous state and federal regulations. While these regulations are meant to ensure that residents of nursing care facilities receive quality care, they also give many people a false sense of assurance that regulation can actually accomplish that goal.
Today, however -- more than 45 years after the first major set of federal standards regulating the industry were introduced and more than 25 years after President Ronald Reagan strengthened those standards by signing the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act into law -- instances of nursing home abuse and neglect remain far too prevalent in an industry that continues to show billions of dollars in profit each year.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Negligence on Sunday, May 6, 2012
West Virginia nursing home residents are often not in the best of health and can develop serious or life-threatening medical conditions without any abuse or negligence on the part of nursing home staff. This is true even of Stage I and Stage II bedsores (also known as pressure ulcers or decubitus ulcers). Potentially life-threatening Stage III and Stage IV bedsores, on the other hand, almost never develop without negligence a nursing home and its staff being somehow involved.
Last week, a jury recognized that fact and ordered a major national nursing home corporation to pay $3.2 million to the family of an 88-year-old resident who died from complications related to of an infected, baseball-sized bedsore.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Medication Errors on Thursday, May 3, 2012
Anti-psychotic medications can be used to effectively inhibit aggressive or combative behavior in people who suffer from schizophrenia or disorders with similar symptoms. However, because anti-psychotics can also cause sudden blood pressure drops, irregular heart rhythms and other serious health problems in people who suffer from dementia -- government regulators say that these powerful drugs should not be used on nursing home residents who have Alzheimer's or other ailments related to dementia.
Call it a medication error or deliberate abuse, a recent newspaper investigation based on government data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request has uncovered evidence that suggests in 2010 alone, roughly 185,000 U.S. nursing home residents received such drugs even though their conditions did not warrant it.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Information on Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Picking up where we left off in our last blog post, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigators recently conducted a nationwide emergency and natural disaster preparedness survey of nursing homes. Unfortunately, the survey produced some alarming observations West Virginia residents who need to choose a nursing home should know about before making a decision.
Investigators started their work by looking at nursing homes that "on paper" - at least -- appeared to be in compliance with federal emergency planning (92 percent) and emergency training requirements (72 percent) To see whether that was actually the case and find out how good the plans at those facilities really were, investigators visited a representative sample of 24 homes that had been affected by disasters to pull the actual plans and interview staff members. And it was then that a different picture began to emerge.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Information on Sunday, April 29, 2012
There are a lot of factors West Virginia residents should consider when choosing a nursing home: proximity to family members and friends who will visit regularly, cost and so forth. Given the frequency of reports detailing horrific instances of nursing home abuse, however, it is also a decision that demands a great deal of research. But even then, even after doing everything possible to make sure your loved one will receive the kind of care he or she deserves -- actually choosing a nursing home requires more than just a little faith and trust.
In numerous previous blog posts, we've talked about important factors and actions people can take to make the best choice for their loved ones. Today we want to highlight one more item to consider: nursing home plans for natural disasters and emergencies.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Neglect on Thursday, April 19, 2012
If discovered, most cases of nursing home neglect or abuse in West Virginia will lead to the filing of a civil lawsuit. Criminal charges, by contrast, are generally reserved for only the most extreme cases of misconduct. Before we talk about a recent case where that happened, it's worth mentioning that the words "abuse" and "neglect" have significantly different legal meanings in the context of nursing home litigation.
Nursing home abuse generally refers to knowing and intentional acts, such as a physical or sexual assault. Nursing home neglect, on the other hand, can apply to any instance where a facility or its staff failed to provide residents with an acceptable level of care.
On behalf of The Bell Law Firm, PLLC posted in Nursing Home Negligence on Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Last year, the United States Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Medicare reimbursement rate for nursing homes in West Virginia and elsewhere would be adjusted by 11.1 percent. DHHS officials felt the measure was necessary to "better align Medicare payments with (the) costs" of providing care. Not surprisingly, industry analysts decried the move and claimed it would devastate the market.
The most recent year-end earnings statements of publicly traded nursing homes tell a different story -- one with "strong balance sheets," "better than expected operating results" and a 200 percent jump in annual revenues for one company in particular. At the same time, industry participants are still failing to provide quality care on a consistent basis and continue to be plagued by incidents of elder abuse and neglect.
