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Thursday, July 15, 2010
Nursing Home Abuse Investigations Delayed
It's been 11 months since Johnson Mathers Nursing Home in Carlisle received the state's most serious regulatory citation in the May 2009 death of James "Ronnie" Duncan.
The Type A citation also was sent from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the agency that issues the citations, to the office of Attorney General Jack Conway, which reviews them for criminal wrongdoing.
Since then, no decision has been made to close the case or pursue criminal charges in the death of the mentally handicapped man who died from profuse bleeding in the brain after a fall. Staff members put Duncan back to bed and left him without treatment for three hours, according to state and court documents.
The Duncan case is one of eight nursing home cases that have languished for months and sometimes years as investigators try to determine whether to pursue charges.
Of the 107 serious citations issued by the cabinet's Office of Inspector General from December 2006 through 2009, eight cases are open and under review by the attorney general's Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control or local prosecutors, according to a Herald-Leader review.
Those eight cases have been pending for an average of 19 months.
Shelley Johnson, spokeswoman for Conway, said there is no specific time frame in which cases are resolved because of individual factors in each investigation. (Conway has been in office since January 2008.)
Police or coroners are not normally called to nursing home deaths in Kentucky, so there is no collection of physical evidence.
In addition, investigators' high case loads, staffing shortages and coordination with other law enforcement agencies have slowed some investigations, said Johnson. Other factors include high turnover of nursing home staff and difficulty finding witnesses.
At least two cases have been open for nearly three years and involve the same nursing home.
A June 2007 citation against Villaspring of Erlanger in Kenton County says that a resident developed sepsis when the facility didn't monitor pressure ulcers. In December 2007, nursing home officials were cited for failing to monitor a resident's dose of Coumadin, a drug that prevents blood clots.
"In the case of Villaspring, this office has conducted an extensive investigation involving the allegations of abuse and neglect," Johnson said. "Our investigators have also looked into other allegations of neglect at Villaspring that were not the subject of any Type A citation."
Because Villaspring is an ongoing investigation, state officials would not comment on specific details.
Kim Majick, a spokeswoman for Villaspring, said: "The attorney general's office fully investigated these cases, and Villaspring provided multiple charts, interviews, correspondence over that 21/2-year period, and we believe the cases after thorough vetting by the AG's offices are complete."
Type A citations from the state don't include the residents' names.
Other cases that are still open include those involving:
■ Woodcrest Manor Care Center. It's been 11 months since a serious citation was issued at the Elsmere facility, according to records from the attorney general's office.
After a resident experienced five falls in less than a month, Woodcrest Manor officials placed the resident's bed against the wall and put a floor sensor in the room so staff could hear if the resident fell. After that, the resident began scooting down and going over the end of the bed so the floor sensor would not sound.
Even though the nursing staff knew that, there was no evidence that the facility addressed it. On July 9, 2009, the resident was found three feet from the bed with a fractured spine and a hematoma to the head. He was taken to a hospital, where he died six days later. According to the attorney general's office, the case is still under review.
Woodcrest Manor administrator Bob Day declined to comment.
■ Prestonsburg Health Care Center. A citation was issued in June 2009 based on a case involving a resident who for two days was pale, sweating, clutching his legs in pain and yelling "Oh God." No one called a physician, the citation said.
Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/07/12/1345475/serious-cases-are-sometimes-pending.html#ixzz0tlLEi3N5
Abuse investigations tend to languish - Voiceless & Vulnerable: Nursing Home Abuse - Kentucky.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
The Type A citation also was sent from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, the agency that issues the citations, to the office of Attorney General Jack Conway, which reviews them for criminal wrongdoing.
Since then, no decision has been made to close the case or pursue criminal charges in the death of the mentally handicapped man who died from profuse bleeding in the brain after a fall. Staff members put Duncan back to bed and left him without treatment for three hours, according to state and court documents.
The Duncan case is one of eight nursing home cases that have languished for months and sometimes years as investigators try to determine whether to pursue charges.
Of the 107 serious citations issued by the cabinet's Office of Inspector General from December 2006 through 2009, eight cases are open and under review by the attorney general's Office of Medicaid Fraud and Abuse Control or local prosecutors, according to a Herald-Leader review.
Those eight cases have been pending for an average of 19 months.
Shelley Johnson, spokeswoman for Conway, said there is no specific time frame in which cases are resolved because of individual factors in each investigation. (Conway has been in office since January 2008.)
Police or coroners are not normally called to nursing home deaths in Kentucky, so there is no collection of physical evidence.
In addition, investigators' high case loads, staffing shortages and coordination with other law enforcement agencies have slowed some investigations, said Johnson. Other factors include high turnover of nursing home staff and difficulty finding witnesses.
At least two cases have been open for nearly three years and involve the same nursing home.
A June 2007 citation against Villaspring of Erlanger in Kenton County says that a resident developed sepsis when the facility didn't monitor pressure ulcers. In December 2007, nursing home officials were cited for failing to monitor a resident's dose of Coumadin, a drug that prevents blood clots.
"In the case of Villaspring, this office has conducted an extensive investigation involving the allegations of abuse and neglect," Johnson said. "Our investigators have also looked into other allegations of neglect at Villaspring that were not the subject of any Type A citation."
Because Villaspring is an ongoing investigation, state officials would not comment on specific details.
Kim Majick, a spokeswoman for Villaspring, said: "The attorney general's office fully investigated these cases, and Villaspring provided multiple charts, interviews, correspondence over that 21/2-year period, and we believe the cases after thorough vetting by the AG's offices are complete."
Type A citations from the state don't include the residents' names.
Other cases that are still open include those involving:
■ Woodcrest Manor Care Center. It's been 11 months since a serious citation was issued at the Elsmere facility, according to records from the attorney general's office.
After a resident experienced five falls in less than a month, Woodcrest Manor officials placed the resident's bed against the wall and put a floor sensor in the room so staff could hear if the resident fell. After that, the resident began scooting down and going over the end of the bed so the floor sensor would not sound.
Even though the nursing staff knew that, there was no evidence that the facility addressed it. On July 9, 2009, the resident was found three feet from the bed with a fractured spine and a hematoma to the head. He was taken to a hospital, where he died six days later. According to the attorney general's office, the case is still under review.
Woodcrest Manor administrator Bob Day declined to comment.
■ Prestonsburg Health Care Center. A citation was issued in June 2009 based on a case involving a resident who for two days was pale, sweating, clutching his legs in pain and yelling "Oh God." No one called a physician, the citation said.
Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/07/12/1345475/serious-cases-are-sometimes-pending.html#ixzz0tlLEi3N5
Abuse investigations tend to languish - Voiceless & Vulnerable: Nursing Home Abuse - Kentucky.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Investigations into Nursing Home Abuse in Kentucky Can Take Years
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported that an investigation into a Kentucky nursing home is still pending 11 months after the nursing home received a citation for the death of a patient who did not receive treatment for three hours after a fall that caused brain bleeding. No decision to either close the case or pursue criminal charges has been made.
There are eight similar cases open in Kentucky, which have been ongoing for an average of 19 months each. Two of these cases have been open for almost three years and involve the same nursing home. The office that deals with these serious citations, the Kentucky attorney general’s office, has seen a 26 percent budget cut this year. Investigators’ larger caseloads are resulting in the many pending cases.Investigations into Nursing Home Abuse in Kentucky Can Take Years | The Huffington Post Investigative Fund: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
There are eight similar cases open in Kentucky, which have been ongoing for an average of 19 months each. Two of these cases have been open for almost three years and involve the same nursing home. The office that deals with these serious citations, the Kentucky attorney general’s office, has seen a 26 percent budget cut this year. Investigators’ larger caseloads are resulting in the many pending cases.Investigations into Nursing Home Abuse in Kentucky Can Take Years | The Huffington Post Investigative Fund: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Saturday, July 10, 2010
N. C. Nursing home faces lawsuit
As a nurse heads to court on murder charges in the morphine-related death of a patient, her Chapel Hill nursing home faces civil malpractice suits following serious injuries to two other patients.
Her husband, Marian Orlowski, died of pneumonia on July 16 at age 86. Two years earlier, his wife took him to Britthaven of Chapel Hill after a surgery at UNC Hospitals.
"Later on that same day, Dr. Marian Orlowski was found on the floor of his room," states a legal complaint filed by the Orlowskis' attorney. "He had fallen and sustained serious personal injuries, including a fracture to his left hip."
The suit accuses Britthaven of negligence, including failure to monitor Orlowski, who suffered from dementia according to the complaint, and not providing a bed with side rails.
Nursing home lawsuits:
Her husband, Marian Orlowski, died of pneumonia on July 16 at age 86. Two years earlier, his wife took him to Britthaven of Chapel Hill after a surgery at UNC Hospitals.
"Later on that same day, Dr. Marian Orlowski was found on the floor of his room," states a legal complaint filed by the Orlowskis' attorney. "He had fallen and sustained serious personal injuries, including a fracture to his left hip."
The suit accuses Britthaven of negligence, including failure to monitor Orlowski, who suffered from dementia according to the complaint, and not providing a bed with side rails.
Nursing home lawsuits:
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Massachusetts Jury Verdicts Down
BOSTON, MA -- Eight years later, James W. Gilden remembers the day he fell down the steps at the Dedham Probate & Family Court like it was yesterday.
The 70-year-old divorce lawyer from Sharon, a regular at the courthouse for more than four decades, lost his balance on the slippery marble floor and tumbled down several flights of stairs before slamming onto the landing below.
Gilden would go on to file a negligence suit in Norfolk Superior Court against the Trial Court and its chief justice for administration and management, Robert A. Mulligan.
"The steps were concave and slanted a little bit forward," Gilden recently recalled of the 2002 accident. "At a minimum, they should've put up some kind of warning. After that happened to me, they put no-slip strips on the stairs, but the trial judge refused to allow us to even bring that up in front of the jury."
Gilden said that ruling by Judge Thomas A. Connors dashed any chance he had of holding the court accountable for the injuries to his knee, which required arthroscopic surgery and months of painful rehabilitation.
But practitioners claim there was something else at play when the jury returned a defense verdict in the case last April: a deep-seated anti-plaintiffs' bias in Massachusetts.
In fact, a review by Lawyers Weekly of the civil verdicts rendered in Superior Court in 2009 shows that the deck is heavily stacked against tort plaintiffs, particularly those who go to trial in Norfolk County and other suburban communities. And the numbers are even more dismal for plaintiffs in medical-malpractice cases (see sidebar on page 27).
According to the statistics, only five of the 35 personal injury verdicts returned in Norfolk County in 2009 favored plaintiffs. The county's 14 percent success rate was 22 percentage points lower than Essex County, which had the highest rate of plaintiffs' verdicts, and 12 points behind the statewide average of 26 percent.
"A plaintiff's verdict is so rare here that when we have one, it's something people really take note of," Norfolk Superior Court Regional Administrative Justice Janet L. Sanders said. "Norfolk has traditionally been pro-defense, but there seems to be a more pronounced trend in the last few years, particularly the last two, where the numbers of plaintiffs' verdicts have dropped precipitously."
Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady, who regularly sits in Norfolk County, concurs with Sanders.
"This is certainly not the golden age of torts," he said.
‘A hard battle'
Lawyers Weekly collected the numbers for this story by running every Superior Court case tried in 2009 through the state's Trial Court Information Center database. Of those 700-plus cases, any verdict for the plaintiff, regardless of the amount of money awarded, was considered a plaintiff's win.
The only region in Massachusetts with a lower success rate than Norfolk County was the Cape and Islands, which saw eight of its nine tort trials decided in favor of defendants.
Brady, who specialized in products liability defense at the Boston law firm of Nutter, McClennen & Fish prior to his appointment to the bench in 1989, keeps a log of every negligence case tried in his courtroom.
Unlike the method used by Lawyers Weekly, however, the judge defines a plaintiff's victory as a verdict in which the jury awards a dollar figure that exceeds the plaintiff's pre-trial settlement offer. (Such data is not available on the state's database.)
"To me, beating the offer is the true measure of whether someone wins or loses," Brady said. "Those numbers tell you that it's a hard battle for a plaintiff's lawyer in any case where the defendant presents some sort of plausible defense. The plaintiffs will hardly ever win by my definition of a win."
Of the 151 negligence trials Brady has presided over since 1993 when he first started keeping track, only 16 have resulted in plaintiffs' verdicts, he said. In Norfolk County, only seven of 69 ended in favor of plaintiffs. Of the 52 trials he has heard in Plymouth County, 49 - or 92 percent - were decided for the defense.
Because the likelihood of plaintiffs attaining success is so remote, Brady said, he has seen far fewer personal injury cases - especially those involving car accidents and slip and falls - go to trial over the past three or four years.
Since Norfolk County started tracking its results in 2006, the few cases decided for plaintiffs have generally resulted in miniscule monetary awards, Sanders said.
"Over a four-year period, we're talking about only a handful of cases that have been big verdicts, in the hundreds of thousands," she said. "The plaintiffs' bar has admitted to us that they only come to Norfolk if they have to for venue reasons. They're not avoiding us because of our court; they're avoiding us because of the low verdicts."
When a lawyer has the option of filing outside of Norfolk County, the decision is an easy one to make, according to Robert M. Higgins of Lubin & Meyer in Boston.
In fact, he said, any attorney who would willingly try a case in Dedham when alternative venue options exist - knowing how bleak the numbers are - would be committing malpractice.
"Generally, the belief is that the majority of big verdicts in Massachusetts come out of the larger cities," Higgins said. "The further you get into suburbs - the Dedhams, the Barnstables, the Plymouths - the perception is that you'll get a more conservative, pro-defendant jury pool than you will in places like Worcester, Springfield or Boston."
‘Same wasteland everywhere'
J. Michael Conley, who represented Gilden in his Superior Court case in Dedham, said while the news out of Norfolk County is dismal for plaintiffs' lawyers, it's not a whole lot better in other parts of the state.
"What we're seeing in Norfolk, which is an affluent suburban community, is a subset of what we're seeing statewide," he said. "It's the same wasteland everywhere you go."
Like most of the judges and attorneys interviewed by Lawyers Weekly, Conley struggled to explain the precise reasons for the bleak results. The Braintree lawyer said one factor is the pre-conceived beliefs that members of the venire bring to trial.
"There is a lot of sociology behind it, but one thing that is going on out there is that there is a huge amount of anti-plaintiff sentiment in the populous and therefore in the jury pool," he said. "I don't think you'll find plaintiffs' lawyers in love with jurors anywhere in Massachusetts these days."
Because Massachusetts is one of the few states in the country that does not allow a meaningful voir dire process, lawyers have difficulty weeding out troublesome jurors during empanelment, Conley said, calling it a "good day" if he can get a judge to ask potential jurors whether they believe they would be adversely affected by a plaintiff's verdict.
Judge Brady, who meets with jurors at the conclusion of each of his trials, said juries tend to be hard on personal injury plaintiffs, "figuring that they've got their back problems, too, and that this is another one of those McDonald's suits about hot coffee."
In motor vehicle cases, meanwhile, many jurors mistakenly believe that insurance premiums will be negatively impacted by a plaintiff's' verdict, Wilbraham lawyer Francis W. Bloom said. That perception has prompted Bloom to steer clear of soft-tissue cases, which he gladly tried a few years ago.
"You have an uphill battle before you even stand up because there is no way a juror with that kind of bias can possibly sit indifferent on your trial," he said. "There is an attitude among jurors, particularly with the economy being so tough, that if they have to struggle, why should they be generous with the plaintiff?"
Sidebar:
While it was no easy task for personal injury plaintiffs in Massachusetts to prevail at trial in 2009, it was nearly impossible for them to win medical-malpractice claims.
According to a Lawyers Weekly review of every Superior Court case tried last year, nearly 90 percent of the med-mal disputes that went to trial were decided in favor of doctors.
In Norfolk County, all 12 of the court's medical-malpractice trials ended with defense verdicts.
"I was appointed to the bench in 2001, and I have never presided over a medical-malpractice trial that resulted in a plaintiff's verdict," said Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders, who serves as Norfolk County's regional administrative justice.
Likewise, Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady, who has presided over 28 med-mal trials since 1993, said he has had only one trial result in a plaintiff's verdict that exceeded a defendant's settlement offer.
Jeffrey N. Catalano of Boston's Todd & Weld, a med-mal lawyer who secured one of only 11 plaintiffs' victories in the state in 2009, said the prospects are so poor that several attorneys have stopped handling them altogether.
"There has been a lot of public-relations money poured into misrepresentations about lawsuit abuse, health care costs going up, and doctors leaving the state," he said. "Unfortunately, a lot of it has been effective. There is real juror hostility toward patients and plaintiffs who choose to pursue these cases."Dolan Media Company -- Dolan Media Newswire Story
The 70-year-old divorce lawyer from Sharon, a regular at the courthouse for more than four decades, lost his balance on the slippery marble floor and tumbled down several flights of stairs before slamming onto the landing below.
Gilden would go on to file a negligence suit in Norfolk Superior Court against the Trial Court and its chief justice for administration and management, Robert A. Mulligan.
"The steps were concave and slanted a little bit forward," Gilden recently recalled of the 2002 accident. "At a minimum, they should've put up some kind of warning. After that happened to me, they put no-slip strips on the stairs, but the trial judge refused to allow us to even bring that up in front of the jury."
Gilden said that ruling by Judge Thomas A. Connors dashed any chance he had of holding the court accountable for the injuries to his knee, which required arthroscopic surgery and months of painful rehabilitation.
But practitioners claim there was something else at play when the jury returned a defense verdict in the case last April: a deep-seated anti-plaintiffs' bias in Massachusetts.
In fact, a review by Lawyers Weekly of the civil verdicts rendered in Superior Court in 2009 shows that the deck is heavily stacked against tort plaintiffs, particularly those who go to trial in Norfolk County and other suburban communities. And the numbers are even more dismal for plaintiffs in medical-malpractice cases (see sidebar on page 27).
According to the statistics, only five of the 35 personal injury verdicts returned in Norfolk County in 2009 favored plaintiffs. The county's 14 percent success rate was 22 percentage points lower than Essex County, which had the highest rate of plaintiffs' verdicts, and 12 points behind the statewide average of 26 percent.
"A plaintiff's verdict is so rare here that when we have one, it's something people really take note of," Norfolk Superior Court Regional Administrative Justice Janet L. Sanders said. "Norfolk has traditionally been pro-defense, but there seems to be a more pronounced trend in the last few years, particularly the last two, where the numbers of plaintiffs' verdicts have dropped precipitously."
Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady, who regularly sits in Norfolk County, concurs with Sanders.
"This is certainly not the golden age of torts," he said.
‘A hard battle'
Lawyers Weekly collected the numbers for this story by running every Superior Court case tried in 2009 through the state's Trial Court Information Center database. Of those 700-plus cases, any verdict for the plaintiff, regardless of the amount of money awarded, was considered a plaintiff's win.
The only region in Massachusetts with a lower success rate than Norfolk County was the Cape and Islands, which saw eight of its nine tort trials decided in favor of defendants.
Brady, who specialized in products liability defense at the Boston law firm of Nutter, McClennen & Fish prior to his appointment to the bench in 1989, keeps a log of every negligence case tried in his courtroom.
Unlike the method used by Lawyers Weekly, however, the judge defines a plaintiff's victory as a verdict in which the jury awards a dollar figure that exceeds the plaintiff's pre-trial settlement offer. (Such data is not available on the state's database.)
"To me, beating the offer is the true measure of whether someone wins or loses," Brady said. "Those numbers tell you that it's a hard battle for a plaintiff's lawyer in any case where the defendant presents some sort of plausible defense. The plaintiffs will hardly ever win by my definition of a win."
Of the 151 negligence trials Brady has presided over since 1993 when he first started keeping track, only 16 have resulted in plaintiffs' verdicts, he said. In Norfolk County, only seven of 69 ended in favor of plaintiffs. Of the 52 trials he has heard in Plymouth County, 49 - or 92 percent - were decided for the defense.
Because the likelihood of plaintiffs attaining success is so remote, Brady said, he has seen far fewer personal injury cases - especially those involving car accidents and slip and falls - go to trial over the past three or four years.
Since Norfolk County started tracking its results in 2006, the few cases decided for plaintiffs have generally resulted in miniscule monetary awards, Sanders said.
"Over a four-year period, we're talking about only a handful of cases that have been big verdicts, in the hundreds of thousands," she said. "The plaintiffs' bar has admitted to us that they only come to Norfolk if they have to for venue reasons. They're not avoiding us because of our court; they're avoiding us because of the low verdicts."
When a lawyer has the option of filing outside of Norfolk County, the decision is an easy one to make, according to Robert M. Higgins of Lubin & Meyer in Boston.
In fact, he said, any attorney who would willingly try a case in Dedham when alternative venue options exist - knowing how bleak the numbers are - would be committing malpractice.
"Generally, the belief is that the majority of big verdicts in Massachusetts come out of the larger cities," Higgins said. "The further you get into suburbs - the Dedhams, the Barnstables, the Plymouths - the perception is that you'll get a more conservative, pro-defendant jury pool than you will in places like Worcester, Springfield or Boston."
‘Same wasteland everywhere'
J. Michael Conley, who represented Gilden in his Superior Court case in Dedham, said while the news out of Norfolk County is dismal for plaintiffs' lawyers, it's not a whole lot better in other parts of the state.
"What we're seeing in Norfolk, which is an affluent suburban community, is a subset of what we're seeing statewide," he said. "It's the same wasteland everywhere you go."
Like most of the judges and attorneys interviewed by Lawyers Weekly, Conley struggled to explain the precise reasons for the bleak results. The Braintree lawyer said one factor is the pre-conceived beliefs that members of the venire bring to trial.
"There is a lot of sociology behind it, but one thing that is going on out there is that there is a huge amount of anti-plaintiff sentiment in the populous and therefore in the jury pool," he said. "I don't think you'll find plaintiffs' lawyers in love with jurors anywhere in Massachusetts these days."
Because Massachusetts is one of the few states in the country that does not allow a meaningful voir dire process, lawyers have difficulty weeding out troublesome jurors during empanelment, Conley said, calling it a "good day" if he can get a judge to ask potential jurors whether they believe they would be adversely affected by a plaintiff's verdict.
Judge Brady, who meets with jurors at the conclusion of each of his trials, said juries tend to be hard on personal injury plaintiffs, "figuring that they've got their back problems, too, and that this is another one of those McDonald's suits about hot coffee."
In motor vehicle cases, meanwhile, many jurors mistakenly believe that insurance premiums will be negatively impacted by a plaintiff's' verdict, Wilbraham lawyer Francis W. Bloom said. That perception has prompted Bloom to steer clear of soft-tissue cases, which he gladly tried a few years ago.
"You have an uphill battle before you even stand up because there is no way a juror with that kind of bias can possibly sit indifferent on your trial," he said. "There is an attitude among jurors, particularly with the economy being so tough, that if they have to struggle, why should they be generous with the plaintiff?"
Sidebar:
While it was no easy task for personal injury plaintiffs in Massachusetts to prevail at trial in 2009, it was nearly impossible for them to win medical-malpractice claims.
According to a Lawyers Weekly review of every Superior Court case tried last year, nearly 90 percent of the med-mal disputes that went to trial were decided in favor of doctors.
In Norfolk County, all 12 of the court's medical-malpractice trials ended with defense verdicts.
"I was appointed to the bench in 2001, and I have never presided over a medical-malpractice trial that resulted in a plaintiff's verdict," said Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders, who serves as Norfolk County's regional administrative justice.
Likewise, Superior Court Judge Patrick F. Brady, who has presided over 28 med-mal trials since 1993, said he has had only one trial result in a plaintiff's verdict that exceeded a defendant's settlement offer.
Jeffrey N. Catalano of Boston's Todd & Weld, a med-mal lawyer who secured one of only 11 plaintiffs' victories in the state in 2009, said the prospects are so poor that several attorneys have stopped handling them altogether.
"There has been a lot of public-relations money poured into misrepresentations about lawsuit abuse, health care costs going up, and doctors leaving the state," he said. "Unfortunately, a lot of it has been effective. There is real juror hostility toward patients and plaintiffs who choose to pursue these cases."Dolan Media Company -- Dolan Media Newswire Story
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Alzheimer's Patient Murdered with Morphine at N.C. Nursing Home
A caregiver is charged with murdering an Alzheimer's patient at a North Carolina nursing home with a heavy dose of morphine. Investigators say 44-year-old Angela Almore, who worked at Britthaven of Chapel Hill, is charged with second-degree murder in the February, 2010 death of 84-year-old Rachel Holliday.
Almore was indicted Monday according to CBS affiliate WRAL.
In addition to the murder case, Almore faces charges of felony abuse, related to hospitalization of six other Alheimer's patients to whom authorities say she also gave morphine."
Alzheimer's Patient Murdered with Morphine : "HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (CBS/WRAL)
Almore was indicted Monday according to CBS affiliate WRAL.
In addition to the murder case, Almore faces charges of felony abuse, related to hospitalization of six other Alheimer's patients to whom authorities say she also gave morphine."
Alzheimer's Patient Murdered with Morphine : "HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (CBS/WRAL)
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
VIDEO: NYC Nursing Home Abuse seen
Nurse Jessie Joiner landed herself in court after she appeared to jerk a wheelchair out from under an elderly patient, a fall which caused the victim to break her hip.
Nurse Jessie Joiner landed herself in court after she appeared to jerk a wheelchair out from under an elderly patient, a fall which caused the victim to break her hip.
But CBS got an exclusive look at what happens when a nurse, instead of taking care of a patient, causes incredible harm. It was a case of nursing home horror -- and it was all captured on tape.
In a video a nurse is seen allegedly dumping an elderly woman in a wheelchair on the floor.
It has led to criminal charges filed against the nurse by the attorney general.
The NY attorney general said everything you need to know about the criminal charges Joiner faces is on the video recorded by a camera placed to protect patients and staff, by the William Benenson Rehabilitation Pavilion in Queens.
The incident happened on March 20, just after 9 p.m. Joiner is seen on video pushing a medication cart but suddenly abandons the cart and heads to the patient in the wheelchair. Joiner appears to jerk the chair sharply to the left and the woman, who is 85 years old and suffers from dementia, goes flying to the ground, a fall that breaks her hip.
story VIDEO: NYC Nursing Home Assault
Nurse Jessie Joiner landed herself in court after she appeared to jerk a wheelchair out from under an elderly patient, a fall which caused the victim to break her hip.
But CBS got an exclusive look at what happens when a nurse, instead of taking care of a patient, causes incredible harm. It was a case of nursing home horror -- and it was all captured on tape.
In a video a nurse is seen allegedly dumping an elderly woman in a wheelchair on the floor.
It has led to criminal charges filed against the nurse by the attorney general.
The NY attorney general said everything you need to know about the criminal charges Joiner faces is on the video recorded by a camera placed to protect patients and staff, by the William Benenson Rehabilitation Pavilion in Queens.
The incident happened on March 20, just after 9 p.m. Joiner is seen on video pushing a medication cart but suddenly abandons the cart and heads to the patient in the wheelchair. Joiner appears to jerk the chair sharply to the left and the woman, who is 85 years old and suffers from dementia, goes flying to the ground, a fall that breaks her hip.
story VIDEO: NYC Nursing Home Assault
Friday, May 28, 2010
Nursing Home Charged $29M in Wrongful Death Death
Nursing Home Charged $29M in Wrongful Death Death
Two small firm lawyers joined forces to win a $29 million jury verdict against a nursing home for delaying treatment of a 79-year-old woman who suffered a fractured hip and bed sore that led to her death.
Edward Dudensing, who runs a two-lawyer firm in Sacramento, Calif., and Jay Renneisen, founder of the two-lawyer Nursing Home & Elder Abuse Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same law school and both specialize in elder abuse cases.
Trying their first case together, they convinced the jury that the nursing home chain’s chronic understaffing and a corporate scheme that siphoned profits to an alter-ego entity merited punitive damages.
“The corporate manipulation of money earned by the facility supported our position that this was an organization that puts profits over patient care,” said Dudensing.
A decision to leave three health care workers on the jury - including a nurse who raised her hand during jury selection to say she thought jury awards are too high and that punitive damages are generally not a good idea - resulted in a surprise ending to the seven-week trial.
“We went back and forth about it, but we felt good about having health care providers on the jury for liability, and we were willing to take our chances that punitive damages would be lower,” said Dudensing.
In the end, however, the jury was so outraged that it ignored the plaintiffs’ request for $10 million in punitive damages and instead nearly tripled that amount to $28 million.
Defense attorney Michael Levangie of Prout LeVangie in Sacramento, Calif. did not return a call seeking comment.
Understaffing
The case alleged that Horizon West, owner of 33 nursing homes across California and Utah, delayed the diagnosis and treatment of Frances Tanner, a 79-year-old Alzheimer’s and dementia patient, for eight days after she fell and fractured her hip. During the delay, she developed a bed sore that was also listed as a cause of death on her death certificate.
At trial, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the facility under-budgeted for staff and kept staffing at the bare minimum.
Two small firm lawyers joined forces to win a $29 million jury verdict against a nursing home for delaying treatment of a 79-year-old woman who suffered a fractured hip and bed sore that led to her death.
Edward Dudensing, who runs a two-lawyer firm in Sacramento, Calif., and Jay Renneisen, founder of the two-lawyer Nursing Home & Elder Abuse Center in Walnut Creek, Calif., grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same law school and both specialize in elder abuse cases.
Trying their first case together, they convinced the jury that the nursing home chain’s chronic understaffing and a corporate scheme that siphoned profits to an alter-ego entity merited punitive damages.
“The corporate manipulation of money earned by the facility supported our position that this was an organization that puts profits over patient care,” said Dudensing.
A decision to leave three health care workers on the jury - including a nurse who raised her hand during jury selection to say she thought jury awards are too high and that punitive damages are generally not a good idea - resulted in a surprise ending to the seven-week trial.
“We went back and forth about it, but we felt good about having health care providers on the jury for liability, and we were willing to take our chances that punitive damages would be lower,” said Dudensing.
In the end, however, the jury was so outraged that it ignored the plaintiffs’ request for $10 million in punitive damages and instead nearly tripled that amount to $28 million.
Defense attorney Michael Levangie of Prout LeVangie in Sacramento, Calif. did not return a call seeking comment.
Understaffing
The case alleged that Horizon West, owner of 33 nursing homes across California and Utah, delayed the diagnosis and treatment of Frances Tanner, a 79-year-old Alzheimer’s and dementia patient, for eight days after she fell and fractured her hip. During the delay, she developed a bed sore that was also listed as a cause of death on her death certificate.
At trial, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the facility under-budgeted for staff and kept staffing at the bare minimum.
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