UMass hospital has second death involving alarm fatigue

The second patient death in four years involving “alarm fatigue’’ at UMass Memorial Medical Center has pushed the hospital to intensify efforts to prevent nurses from tuning out monitor warning alarms.
Nurses exposed to a cacophony of beeps may no longer hear them or begin to ignore them, and that’s what appears to have happened in the latest case: A 60-year-old man died in an intensive care unit after alarms signaling a fast heart rate and potential breathing problems went unanswered for nearly an hour, according to state investigators who reviewed records at the hospital.

UMass hospital has second death involving alarm fatigue - The Boston Globe

Mass. ranks in bottom half of country for elder care, report finds

Massachusetts ranks 30th of all states when it comes to overall affordability, quality, and availability of services for residents who need long-term care in a nursing facility or in their own home, according to a new national study.
The analysis ranked Massachusetts as one of the most expensive states in the country for the one in seven seniors who are paying for nursing home care out of their own pockets. Only Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and Alaska were rated more expensive, according to the report from the AARP Public Policy Institute and two other foundations. The study also found that programs and services for families who care for loved ones at home are significantly lacking. The report found that Massachusetts spends about 39 percent of its long-term care money on services that would allow elders and disabled residents to be cared for in their homes, while the highest-ranked states allocate about 60 percent of their funds on home- and community-based care.Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, the state’s secretary of Health and Human Services, said that the network of state and community agencies and organizations designed to help elders avoid nursing homes is fragmented and needs better coordination. He said that nursing home administrators are worried about patients falling and being fined by state monitors for injuries from falls, prompting nursing homes to restrain patients too often.

Mass. ranks in bottom half of country for elder care, report finds - The Boston Globe

Former nursing home worker pleads no contest in abuse case

A former nursing assistant accused of abusing a 93-year-old woman at a nursing home last year entered into a two-year deferred prosecution agreement Friday in Buffalo County Court.

Shawna Hardesty, 38, of Buffalo City was charged with intentionally abusing an elder patient -causing bodily harm. That was amended Friday to abuse of a vulnerable adult. Hardesty was accused of repeatedly punching the elderly resident of a Fountain City health care center, leaving a baseball-size bruise on her forehead.
The elderly woman who claimed she was abused by Hardesty has died.
Hardesty entered an Alford plea, in which she pleaded no contest to the charge but maintained innocence.
The agreement calls for Hardesty to complete anger management treatment and counseling, perform 40 hours of community service during the first year of the agreement, and not do volunteer or paid work as a caregiver, except for immediate relatives. She is allowed to provide child care services.

Hardesty was also ordered not to have any contact with St. Michael's Lutheran Home.

According to the criminal complaint:
The elderly woman said Hardesty hit her on numerous occasions, including punching her three times in the forehead Aug. 2, 2010, leaving a large bruise and giving her a headache.
"Every time she (Hardesty) comes in this room, I get a biff," the woman said, displaying a closed fist. Hardesty was the only person who attended to the woman that morning.

Hardesty's employment was terminated by the end of that week, according to nursing home officials. She worked at the center about a year.
Former nursing home worker pleads no contest in abuse case - Leader-Telegram: Front Page

Woman's death raises questions about nursing home medical records

Falsified patient records are untold story of California nursing home care
Don Esco sought skilled nursing care at a Placerville facility for Johnnie, his wife of nearly 61 years, when she was recuperating from a bout with pneumonia. She died 13 days later. Esco sued, alleging that the medical charts lied about Johnnie's treatment.
After nearly 61 years of marriage, she died after a 13-day stay at the El Dorado Care Center in Placerville. Recuperating from a bout with pneumonia, Johnnie Esco, 77, was expected to return home with her husband after some rest and skilled-nursing care.
The nursing home and its former owner, Horizon West Healthcare Inc. would soon be at the center of another legal storm.
Johnnie Esco's death on March 7, 2008, led to a contentious civil lawsuit, investigations by California's Department of Justice and Department of Public Health – and the exhumation of her body from Arlington National Cemetery.
Last week, amid inquiries from The Bee, the state Department of Justice reopened its criminal investigation into Johnnie Esco's treatment at the facility.
The case also raised questions about an aspect of nursing home care that many patients and families take for granted: the integrity of medical records.
"They were just penciling in what they wanted to," said Esco, who obtained his wife's medical records after her death.
He summed up his findings during the lawsuit in one word: "Fabrications."

Esco's suspicions about his wife's care at El Dorado Care Center mushroomed into a broad lawsuit filed in 2009 against the facility and its owner, alleging elder abuse, wrongful death and fraud. An integral aspect of the suit, filed by Esco and his three grown children, accused the facility of falsifying, altering and improperly handling the woman's medical charts as far back as her day of admission.

"It's one of the worst types of elder abuse cases because it's not so obvious on its face," she said. "You really had to dig down."
For Clement, digging down meant digging through records, which she says revealed "a high degree of deception" at the Placerville facility. Clement and other attorneys who sue nursing homes say that falsifying patient records is remarkably common, yet rarely punished by licensing authorities or state and local prosecutors.
Industry representatives say these allegations of fraud are unwarranted and unfair, given the reams of paperwork facilities churn out to meet Medicare and other regulatory demands.
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/19/3920577/womans-death-raises-questions.html#ixzz1YQhGjqTK
Woman's death raises questions about nursing home medical records - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News Sacramento Bee

Nevada closes Las Vegas nursing home after reports of abuse, theft

The state has closed a Las Vegas assisted-living center after charges of elder physical abuse and their money stolen from them.

Residents of the Las Vegas Home Sweet Home, 2615 Lindell Road, were removed and placed in other facilities last week after the state Bureau of Health Care and Compliance suspended the license of the nursing home.
A representative of Las Vegas Home Sweet Home couldn't be reached for comment.
The investigation uncovered cases in which Social Security checks and other funds allegedly were found being deposited into the personal accounts of caregivers. The probe found caregivers took more money than necessary for grocery store purchases and didn't return it to the residents, state officials said.
The state reported there was abuse of an elderly woman who had a shouting match with a manager. Officials said she was dragged down the hallway by her ankles while kicking and screaming.
The woman was removed from the home and Metro Police investigated the alleged physical abuse, the state said.

State closes Las Vegas nursing home after reports of abuse, theft - Friday, Aug. 26, 2011 8:32 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun

CNA charged with theft from 99 year old in nursing home

A CNA was charged with crime after stealing jewelry from two residents at the Ormond Beach nursing home where she worked, police said. Jennifer Lynn Berry, 26, Daytona Beach, was arrested Aug. 18 after police say she confessed to pawning a gold bracelet, wedding band and ring she stole from patients at the Signature HealthCARE of Ormond Beach, 103 N. Clyde Morris Blvd. The items were worth $850, police said.
According to an arrest report, Berry, after being confronted on the thefts, said she found the bracelet on the floor and kept it, but took the rings from the finger of a 99-year-old patient.

Nurse assistant charged in jewelry theft at Ormond nursing home - News

Advocate wants emergency action on nursing care homes

After the death of a personal care home resident who was brain-injured and a state ward, a leading advocate is calling on Gov. Steve Beshear to take emergency action to address the lack of staffing requirements for long-term care facilities.
Bernie Vonderheide, founder of Kentuckians for Nursing Home Reform, said he is asking Beshear to call an emergency session of the General Assembly or to issue an emergency executive order to establish minimum staff-to-resident ratios for all long-term care homes, including personal care homes and nursing homes.

Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2011/09/09/1874117/advocate-wants-legislature-to.html#ixzz1XU1AqA7L Advocate wants Beshear to take emergency action on care homes Voiceless & Vulnerable: Nursing Home Abuse Kentucky.com

Malpractice awards upheld in NY Stillbirth Malpractice

In the Bronx, a mother delivered a stillborn child at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center; the staff had overlooked “the ominous pattern” of fetal distress and delayed an emergency Caesarean for too long, a state investigator found. The hospital’s lawyers have offered $500,000 to settle her malpractice suit.
These two cases are among the first to move through the legal system after New York’s highest court changed state law in 2004 and allowed mothers to sue for their emotional suffering when they claim that medical carelessness caused a stillbirth. With their different price tags on elemental maternal loss, the cases offer a rare view of the legal system’s first computations to set a new value on this singular type of suffering.
They also shed light on the often macabre computations that lawyers make in trying to fix a dollar figure. As these cases represent uncharted territory in the state, the grim comparisons have gone especially far afield. Lawyers sought, among other analogies, to compare the trauma of a stillbirth to that of being attacked by a dog or to a passenger’s spending nine minutes of anguish knowing a plane is going down.
Jeff S. Korek, the lawyer for the woman suing Lincoln, is arguing that the Brooklyn case — which took 14 years to reach this point — set a $1 million standard that should be accepted in the Bronx.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/nyregion/in-stillbirth-malpractice-cases-courts-try-to-put-price-on-mothers-anguish.html?_r=1

Malpractice Insurance Suits Rampant But Few Plaintiffs Get Pay Outs

According to this study, only 1.6% of Doctors who had a claim that resulted in an lawsuit payment.This fact and the fact that only 1% of all cases of medical negligence are even filed! makes the Tort Reformers arguments seem completely without merit and designed to alarm rather than truthfully inform, the public.

Malpractice Insurance Suits Rampant But Few Plaintiffs Get Pay Outs

Hospital Errors Affect About 1 In Every 3 Patients In The USA

Hospital Errors Affect About 1 In Every 3 Patients In The USA

Jurors deliberated nursing home case

Jurors heard recent closing arguments in Polk County Georgia for both sides of a wrongful death lawsuit filed against a Rockmart nursing home.

A defense attorney for Rockmart Nursing and Rehabilitation Center and it’s parent company, Subacute Services Inc., told jurors and a nearly full courtroom that those caring for 82-year-old Ruby Mae Tyler were “neighbors, people you know” and that this suit filed by Tyler’s daughter, Elizabeth Costlow, was to “strike back at mortality.”
Tyler died April 2008 after being a resident in the nursing home for around three months.
The defense attorney, peppering his closing argument with Biblical phrases and Southern colloquialisms, said Tyler was sick with many illnesses, so sick that she could have been successfully sustained anywhere.
The fact was she was going to die, the attorney said.
“She was going home. She knew it,” he said.
The plaintiffs attorney said Tyler may have been in the last stages of life, but didn’t want or need any help dying.
His argument were the pressure ulcers, which he claimed were rooted in neglect at the nursing home, directly contributed to Tyler’s death.
“It was too much for this poor lady to happen and she passed,” he said.
The attorney said the argument wasn’t that Tyler would die so much that she wasn’t allowed to “die with dignity.The closing argument for the plaintiff didn’t focus as much on a verdict as it did on how much to award the plaintiff.
Plaintiff’s counsel used the amount the defense paid its expert witness, $750 an hour, as the standard.
Under their formula, plaintiff’s counsel asked for approximately $2.65 million in negligence damages and between $3.24 to $9.7 million in punitive damages.
Read more: The Fish Wrap - Jurors to deliberate nursing home case
Jurors to deliberate nursing home case

Nursing Home Neglect alleged in Investigation - Denver Colorado

Commerce City, Colo. -- Following a series of CALL7 Investigative reports, the state health department has fined a troubled nursing home in Commerce City more than $100,000 and forced sweeping changes to the facility's management.
"We saw a pattern of repeated complaints," said Nancy McDonald, division director for Health Facilities at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "We realized that with the current management they were unable to, or were not adequately prepared to, make the changes necessary to keep everybody safe." In the last year, CALL7 has uncovered repeated complaints of neglect, injuries and death of patients at the Woodridge Park Nursing and Rehabilitation Center


Inadequate Food?
For months, a frequent complaint by families and nursing staff was that residents were refused additional food because of budget constraints.
"They were telling me they couldn't have seconds because we don't have enough food or they didn't prepare enough food," said Cook Supervisor at Woodridge Park, William Santoro. "I kept hearing that we don't have enough food or we didn't cook enough food."
Santoro explained that he remembered making one pan of spaghetti for 90 people -- each was given an ounce and a half. Santoro told Ferrugia he complained and nothing was done, so he quit.

Nursing Home Shake-Up Follows CALL7 Investigation - Denver News Story - KMGH Denver

Care home's neglect was fatal, lawyers argue

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Workers in an understaffed Charleston nursing home failed to properly care for an 87-year-old woman who had stayed there for about three weeks before dying of dehydration, lawyers for the woman's son said during the first day of a civil trial Tuesday in Kanawha County Circuit Court.
Too few nurses were on staff in Heartland of Charleston to make sure Dorothy Douglas, who suffered from dementia and Alzheimer's, was eating food and drinking water, lawyers for her son Tom told a jury.
In September 2009, Tom Douglas checked his mother into the Heartland home temporarily until a bed opened up at Heritage Center, a Huntington nursing home that is better suited for caring for Alzheimer's patients, Douglas' lawyer told jurors Tuesday afternoon.
Dorothy Douglas died in Cabell Huntington Hospital on Sept. 24, a day after her transfer to the new home.
When she arrived at Heritage Center after three weeks at Heartland, she was covered in bruises, sores and scars in various stages of healing, Quezan said. Crud caked the elderly woman's mouth and she did not respond to her name, sounds or pain.
"You will find that the reason," Quezan said, "is that she was literally dying of thirst."
Care home's neglect was fatal, lawyers argue - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -

Massachusetts Guide to Stopping Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Available

Hamill Law Office of Quincy, MA. announces that they have produced a Free Advocacy Guide for Massachusetts victims of Nursing Home abuse who are still in Nursing Home Care.

Called The  "CONSUMER GUIDE TO STOPPING NURSING HOME ABUSE and NEGLECT",
this free Guide will show you how to immediately halt elder abuse:

 Learn the best ways to approach the problem of abuse or
neglect that is occurring while your loved one is still in the Nursing Home
 Learn the best “in-house” methods for stopping neglect
 Learn powerful and immediate tools to stop abuse.
 The Five best ways to report neglect.
 The “Magic Number” to call in an emergency
 Nine ways to deal with poor treatment.

Hamill Law Group
Advocates for Elder Nursing Home Victims
36 Miller Stile Rd.
Quincy, MA. 02169
(617) 479-4300
http://www.hamill-law.com/

Care home providers at the centre of abuse scandal close a second property

A second care home owned by the company at the centre of allegations of abuse of vulnerable patients is to close, it was announced on Wednesday.

Castlebeck, which owned the Winterbourne View care home in Bristol where abuse was filmed by an undercover BBC journalist for Panorama, has said it will close Rose Villa, also in Bristol.
Four members of Rose Villa's staff were suspended last month following an inspection by regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC) while allegations of misconduct were investigated. But Castlebeck today said it was closing the rehabilitation centre for adults with learning disabilities, which has five patients and 30 staff, for "operational reasons".
Winterbourne View, which saw 13 staff members suspended over allegations of abuse, closed in June.
Castlebeck's chief executive, Lee Reed, the company was closing the site "with regret".
"The service is being closed purely for operational reasons," he said. "Whilst we recognise the concerns raised in the recent CQC inspection report, our decision has resulted from the fact that in reviewing operational practicalities, Rose Villa would be left on its own in the South West - some distance from the support that could be provided by our services in the West Midlands.
"The decision is purely voluntary and not at the instigation of CQC.

Care home providers at the centre of abuse scandal close a second property Society guardian.co.uk