A Superior Court judge in Sacramento just upheld a $29 million verdict in a nursing home abuse case. Judge Roland Candee rejected Horizon West Healthcare’s arguments seeking a new trial or “significantly reduced damages” in a case involving Frances Tanner, 79, a retiree who worked for the FBI and the IRS, said The Bee.

Tanner suffered from mild dementia when she moved into Colonial Healthcare. Seven months later, following a fall and an undiagnosed hip fracture, she was dead due to an infected bedsore, said The Bee. (more…)

A judge has  sanctioned  defendants named in a class action lawsuit against SLS Residential, LLC. Southern District Judge Stephen Robinson assessed $35,000 in penalties after he determined that 80 former patients  had been told by SLS therapists that their private medical records would be made public if they did not opt out of the lawsuit.

SLS runs two residential treatment centers in the town of Southeast, NY  for adolescents and young adults.  In addition to a class action lawsuit, SLS is facing revocation of its state operating licenses for the two facilities. The class action lawsuit, filed by two former SLS Residential patients, alleges that they were subjected to physical and mental abuse.   The lawsuit claims that SLS staff illegally employed manual restraints and put patients in isolation rooms where they were physically and emotionally abused, subjected patients to nightly searches of their bodies and rooms, and denied patients the right to refuse treatment, leave the facility or phone family members.  The complaint also charges SLS with discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and  claims patients were targeted for mistreatment because they were mentally disabled. (more…)

Nursing home abuse is finally getting some attention from Congress, where two separate hearings were held yesterday to discuss the problem.   Committees from both the House of Representatives and the Senate took up the nursing home abuse issue, and now Congress will consider legislation to deal with this serious problem.

Nursing home abuse is one of the most serious problems facing this country’s elderly.  Though it concedes that the true number is probably much higher, The National Center on Elder Abuse estimates at least one in 20 nursing home patients has been the victim of abuse. According to the National Center’s study, 57% of nurses’ aides working in long-term care facilities admitted to having witnessed, and even participating in, acts of abuse. The report sites systemic problems within the nursing home industry, like inadequate pay for workers and chronic understaffing, as contributing to the epidemic of abuse. There are nearly 1.4 million Americans living in nursing homes right now, and that number is expected to more than double in the next decade. As it does, advocates for the elderly and disabled fear that incidences of abuse will continue to climb as well.

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Nursing home neglect often includes a lack of vision care for nursing home residents, a recent study has found. Unfortunately, this problem can have serious implications, as the same study has also discovered that nursing home patients who lack basic eye care have a lower quality of life and are at a higher risk for depression.

Researchers at the University of Alabama, Birmingham have been looking at the lack of eye care services for nursing home patients for some time. Earlier this summer, they published the first phase of their nursing home vision care survey. The investigation covered a total of 380 patients age 55 and older. In addition to examining medical records, each nursing home patient was interviewed about their use of eyeglasses and vision care. What the study found was startling. Even though 90 percent of the nursing home residents had health insurance, two thirds had no reference to an eye exam in their medical chart. When interviewed, 28 percent of residents said that their last exam occurred the previous year, while 20 percent said that it had been more than two years since their last exam. A third of patients couldn’t recall the last time they had an eye examination.

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A nursing home abuse bill, the Elder Justice Act, has been under consideration in Congress for the past five years but has received scant attention and has yet to be passed. Although nursing home and elder abuse are serious and growing problems in this country, the nursing home abuse bill has never even been voted on. While no one in Congress opposes the nursing home abuse legislation, few are trying to push it through the legislative process.

Congressional critics say that the Elder Justice Act has not been passed for a number of reasons that have little to nothing to do with the bill itself. For one thing, Congress has been distracted by the war in Iraq and partisan bickering. But for the most part, they say the Elder Justice Act has been allowed to collect dust because the issue of nursing home abuse has not garnered the kind of media attention it deserves. This past summer, while much of the media was focused on the problems of Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears, Congress held hearings on nursing home abuse. Those hearings were not covered by one major TV news network.

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To US Senators want to know if nursing home abuse and neglect are more prevalent in facilities owned by private Wall Street equity firms, and they are asking the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to find out. Their requests come on the heels of a New York Times investigation that found that the quality of care at nursing homes dropped sharply after they were acquired by private investment concerns.

Senators Hilary Clinton (D-NY) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) based their requests on the report in the New York Times that said drastic cost cutting measures imposed on nursing homes once they were purchased by private equity firms made nursing home neglect and abuse far more likely. Recently, private investment firms have looked to nursing homes as a possible route to easy money. These firms buy facilities, drastically reduce their costs, then turn around and sell them at huge profits.

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Nursing home abuse and elder abuse are among some of the most-under reported crimes, but a new study offers hope that more cases could be uncovered. While most victims of elder abuse won’t answer direct questions about this crime, health care professionals and social workers who have received training in this area can become adept at screening older patients for the signs of abuse whenever they are admitted to the hospital. But for such a screening system to work, those who work with the elderly must become familiar with both the signs of elder abuse, and the risk factors that make it likely.

In the United States, about 2500 cases of physical abuse by nursing home staff are being reported each year. The National Center on Elder Abuse estimates at least one in 20 nursing home patients has been the victim of abuse. And sadly, an elderly person’s home is not much safer, with three out of five cases of elder abuse occurring in the senior’s own home at the hands of family members. Because this type of abuse can easily be covered up, the true number is not really known. For this reason, an effective method of screening for nursing home abuse and elder abuse is urgently needed.

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The widespread yet heavily underreported problem of Nursing Home Neglect takes on many unexpected forms, one of which being simple eye care. Nursing homes often neglect to provide residents with even the most basic vision care. A study conducted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham found that nearly a third of the nursing home patients it followed had never received an eye exam after being admitted to a long-term-care facility. This occurred despite the fact that more than half of the patients in the study had some form of visual impairment.

Researchers from the university analyzed medical records from 17 Birmingham-area nursing homes. The investigation covered a total of 380 patients age 55 and older. In addition to examining medical records, each nursing home patient was interviewed about their use of eyeglasses and vision care. What the study found was startling. Even though 90 percent of the nursing home residents had health insurance, two thirds had no reference to an eye exam in their medical chart. When interviewed, 28-percent of residents said that their last exam occurred the previous year, while 20-percent said that it had been more than two years since their last exam. A third of patients couldn’t recall the last time they had an eye examination.

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Physical abuse in a nursing home is not always perpetrated by staff. According to a Cornell University Study, resident-on-resident violence in long-term-care facilities is far more prevalent than previously thought. But the authors of the study concede that they really don’t know how widespread this problem is because nursing home abuse is still woefully understudied.

The new study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is only the second published report to look at patient-to-patient violence. Cornell University examined the records of 747 nursing home patients over the course of the study. Of those, 42 where involved in 79 incidents at nursing homes that actually required police intervention. The finding surprised researchers, especially because the study was not even focused on nursing homes. Rather, it looked at overall community crime, and nursing homes where just one area that was examined.

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The revolting reality of Nursing Home Abuse is on the rise. Though it concedes that the true number is probably much higher, The National Center on Elder Abuse estimates at least one in 20 nursing home patients has been the victim of abuse. There are nearly 1.4 million Americans that are living in nursing homes right now, and that number expected to more than double in the next decade. As it does, advocates for the elderly and disabled fear that incidences of abuse will continue to climb as well.

Unfortunately, a nursing home is not always the place of respite and healing it should be. According to the National Center’s study, 57% of nurses’ aides working in long-term care facilities admitted to witness, and even participating in, acts of nursing home abuse. The report sites systemic problems within the nursing home industry, like inadequate pay for workers and chronic understaffing, as contributing to the epidemic of abuse.

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