Birmingham Injury Blog

The Maryland Injury Attorney Blog has posted an article about another case of nursing home abuse. Generally, one expects the culprits of nursing home abuse to be the employees; however, sometimes fellow residents are the guilty party.

A 98 year old Boston nursing home resident has been indicted for strangling and smothering her 100 year old roommate to death with a plastic shopping bag because she felt her roommate was "trying to take over the room."

...the victim's son had asked the facility to separate the two women due to tensions between them, but he was reassured that they were getting along -- and that his mother did not want to leave the room, where she had lived with her husband until his death in 2007.

The women's room was mere feet from the nurses' station, yet no one noticed a disturbance. Apparently, the 98 year old suffered from dementia and was prone to bouts of "erratic behavior."

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The Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article that discusses how elderly nursing home residents are often put at risk by other residents who are mentally ill or convicted felons. Robert Kreisman, the author of this article, is specifically gearing this article to residents of Illinois, but it certainly contains valuable information for everyone.

Nursing homes often assure people that the psychiatric patients and patients with criminal backgrounds are kept separated from the elderly and "infirm", but...

this does not always prevent the nursing home residents from coming to harm. There have been reports of elderly residents being attacked, injured, or raped by some of the mentally ill residents or those who are convicted felons.

Kreisman also says that the methods used to "identify residents with a criminal history tend to be faulty." Background checks are often performed after the resident has been admitted. These checks seldom identify all kinds of crime and often make the felon look less dangerous than they actually are.

A perfect example of this dilemma is Maplewood Care, where in one instance a 78 year-old was allegedly punched in the face by another resident after that same resident allegedly struck and bruised a 75 year-old patient. Obviously there had not been appropriate monitoring and assessment after the first incident to prevent the recurrence of this nursing home abuse. Among Maplewood Care's roughly 200 residents there are 15 convicted felons, and over 40% of the population has a diagnosis of mental illness.

These new reports are extremely disturbing for those of us who are making decisions about placement of our loved ones in Illinois nursing homes. Nursing homes can be a necessary step for elderly residents who are no longer able to provide for themselves. But placing elderly people with medical needs in an environment where they are more at risk for being harmed is not the answer.

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The Kentucky Injury Law Blog has posted an article about another case of nursing home mistreatment.

Bluegrass Care and Rehabilitation Center received a Type A Citation, the most severe citation, because some of its employees were using their cell phones to take pictures of the residents without their consent. The pictures were then sent to other nursing home employees with sexual song lyrics attached. No one reported the incidents because it happened often and was not seen as a type of abuse.

Apparently, the nursing home ever directly told employees that kind of behavior was unacceptable...although certainly it should have been automatically understood. The nursing home also failed to enforce the rule that prohibited employees from carrying cell phones on residential floors.

The administrator for the nursing home said that the facility had conducted a complete investigation and a number of employees had been let go.

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The Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article about a wrongful death lawsuit against a nursing home in Missouri.

In 2003, the resident, Dorothy Lawrence, began living at Beverly Manor Nursing Home in St. Joseph, Missouri. At the time Lawrence's daughter, Phyllis Skoglund, had power of attorney for her mother and signed the contract with the nursing home on behalf of the resident. This contract included an arbitration clause that stated that "any and all claims, disputes and controversies [regarding the nursing home's care and treatment of Lawrence] shall be resolved exclusively by binding arbitration.

However, Lawrence died shortly after entering the nursing home. Her daughter filed a wrongful death suit, claiming that being dropped by the nursing home staff attributed to her death. The trial court said that the case could proceed even in spite of the arbitration clause in the nursing home contract.

The Missouri Supreme Court found that the wrongful death claim was not derivative from any claims the resident might have had. Further, that the arbitration agreement cannot prevent parties from filing a wrongful death suit. The Supreme Court's reasoning for this was that “the only signature to the agreement is in her capacity as her mother’s agent”.

The defendant nursing home had argued that because the resident and her daughter could only bring one wrongful death suit they were both bound by that contract. However, the Supreme Court disagreed with this line of reasoning because it "require[d] this court to find that by signing on behalf of her mother, Skoglund also is signing on her own behalf and on behalf of the wrongful death plaintiffs.” Yet the court felt that Skoglund was only signing in the capacity of her mother's power of attorney and not on her own behalf, or did she sign it as a representative of the potential wrongful death beneficiaries. Therefore, the wrongful death claim was not barred because of the signed contract.

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The Georgia Injury Law Blog has posted an article that discusses an Associated Press report about the rising number of mentally ill patients inhabiting nursing homes.

Mentally ill residents can be several decades younger and much stronger than elderly nursing home patients. Also, some mentally ill patients can experience fits of rage that, in some cases, leave their frail elderly counterparts dead or severely injured, as in the case of Ivory Jackson.

Ivory Jackson had Alzheimer's, but that wasn't what killed him. At 77, he was smashed in the face with a clock radio as he lay in his nursing home bed.

Jackson's roommate — a mentally ill man nearly 30 years younger — was arrested and charged with the killing. Police found him sitting next to the nurse's station, blood on his hands, clothes and shoes. Inside their room, the ceiling was spattered with blood.

Jackson's roommate was 50 and had a history of aggression and "altered mental status," according to the state nursing home inspector's report. Solomon Owasanoye wandered the streets before he came to All Faith Pavilion, a Chicago nursing home, and he yelled, screamed and kicked doors after he got there.

On May 30, 2008, he allegedly picked up a clock radio, apparently while Jackson slept, and beat him into a coma. Exactly what set him off is unclear. Jackson died of his injuries less than a month later. Owasanoye pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, and after a psychiatric review was ruled unfit to stand trial. He now lives in a state mental hospital.

Around 125,000 young and middle-aged adults, with serious mental conditions, lived in nursing homes last year. That is a drastic increase from the 2002 number of 89,000. Alabama is one of the states that saw the steepest increase. Nursing home employees are often trained in dealing with an aggressive patient, yet they are generally unequipped for the care needed by the mentally ill.

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The Kentucky Injury Law Blog has posted an article about a nursing home that previously recieved a citation against it and is now loosing its Medicare and Medicaid funding.

The Winchester Center for Health and Rehabilitation was given a Type A citation, which is the most serious citation when nursing home neglect or abuse is involved. According to Kathy Gannoe, Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency of the Bluegrass’s executive director, the problems that led to the Type A citation involved medical errors and 31 complaints in 3 months against the facility.

Gannoe says those errors and complaints have been resolved. However, in 2004, this nursing home was one of four involved in a lawsuit in which a settlement of $3.7 million was reached because of:

untreated infections and their delayed treatment, improper restraint use resulting in injuries, failure to properly administer patient medications, failure to evaluate and treat wounds, and insufficient supplies for treating life-threatening illnesses.

The nursing home is now loosing its Medicare and Medicaid funding and several of its occupants are being transferred. To maintain funding, the facility must adhere to federal standards regarding patient care and food storage and preparation.

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The Florida Personal Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article on one of their cases about a "presuit meditation" of $400,000 a nursing home had to reach due to negligence in the care of a patient.

An elderly man who had Alzheimer's and was legally blind and his wife were placed in a nursing home in Boca Raton, FL. The man lived in a room in the facility because he needed more attention than his wife, who lived in a seperate apartment. The man was prone to wandering around the nursing home and often got lost. Notes were made on his charts and he was given an alarm bracelet to help manage it.

He visited his wife's apartment regularly with a medical attendant. However, one night his wife was out when he usually made his visit and the nursing home had notice of this. Despite the notification, alarm bracelet, and security guards around the building, the man still managed to get out and allowed to go outside by himself.

He was noted as missing from his room around 8pm...apparently his alarm bracelet wasn't working at the time. Around 8:50 the facility was told of an accident in which a pedestrian was struck by a car and killed. The fatality was identified as the missing nursing home patient.

While the suit was settled outside of court and is resolved, this is yet another example of nursing home negligence.

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Several years ago we represented a family whose love one was living at an assisted living facility in Walker County, Alabama. He had a history of "escaping" the facility and the facility, we alleged, did not take the steps to protect this gentleman. The end result was he left one day without anyone knowing it and then a manhunt ensued that led to the discovery of his dead body a day or two later. We alleged that this tragedy could have been prevented by simple inexpensive solutions such as an alarm or other warning system that a back door had been opened. This was particularly true since this man had repeatedly left the facility and the staff was on notice of his tendencies but did not take the necessary steps to protect him.

I was reminded of this when I read a posting in a wonderful blog called Nursing Homes Abuse Blog by Jonathon Rosenfield. His recent post about a similar situation brought this memory back. I have looked through this blog and it looks to be full of high quality information so I recommend it to your reading.

If you have a loved one in a nursing home or an assisted living facility then it will be wise for you to ask what their policies and practices are to protect your loved one should he or she become confused and try to leave the facility - usually "to get home"....

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Mandatory arbitration is a growing problem in Alabama and this recent Wall Street Journal article discusses how it is becoming more common in Nursing Home contracts to require the family to sign an arbitration agreement. Please read this entire article but here is the heart of the argument:

Nursing homes have been among the biggest converts to the practice since a wave of big jury awards in the late 1990s. Attorneys litigating nursing-home cases on both sides say arbitration has quickly become the rule rather than the exception. Critics say the binding agreements are determining the outcome of high-stakes cases of vulnerable patients that should instead be handled by the courts. Too often, they say, people don't understand whether the clauses are mandatory, or that they are signing away their rights to sue. "It is an unfair practice given the unequal bargaining position between someone desperate to find a place for their loved ones and a large corporate entity like a nursing home," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican who introduced legislation along with Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin.

'IT SOUNDS SO GOOD FOR THE CUSTOMER'

The biggest arbitration provider, the American Arbitration Association, frowns on agreements requiring arbitration in disputes over nursing-home care and generally refuses such cases. Some patients "really are not in an appropriate state of mind to evaluate an agreement like an arbitration clause," says Eric Tuchmann, the association's general counsel. A second group, the American Health Lawyers Association, also avoids them. Other arbitration groups say they generally accept the cases if the agreements comply with the law.

We have a number of blog posts on our Alabama Consumer Law Blog regarding arbitration and typically how unfair it is to consumers. Its hard to imagine a more unfair use of mandatory arbitration agreements than an elderly person going into a nursing home or the family trying to get their elderly parent into a nursing home. When someone has been injured or killed, forcing the family to go through arbitration seems particularly disgusting.

If you have a question about a nursing home case or an arbitration agreement regarding a nursing home case, please feel free to contact us for a free consultation.

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