Pennsylvania Nursing Home Abuse Attorney Blog

As Philadelphia nursing home neglect attorneys, we are extremely interested in a database of caregivers that will be released March 1. McKnight's Long-Term Care News reported Feb. 17 that the database of caregiving workers deemed "dangerous" in some way has been delayed for 22 years -- since 1988. The Department of Health and Human Services plans to finally make it available next month. But McKnight's reported that an investigative report has already criticized the database as incomplete.

The criticism comes from a joint investigation between ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, and the Los Angeles Times. That report found that states don't communicate well with one another. This allows caregivers with records of violence, theft or incompetence to move to a new state after the first state revokes their professional credentials. The investigation compared the federal database to state records and discovered that many states simply hadn't reported cases, or all of the details of those cases, to the federal government. Many of them are among the most recent complaints.

One licensed nurse in the article had been accused of mistreating nursing home residents at three previous facilities before he was charged in Minnesota with assaulting a resident. His licenses in three other states are on probation or restricted and he had surrendered a Texas license -- but his California license is clear.

McKnight's said DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius responded to the report by asking state governors to fill in the missing information. As Pennsylvania nursing home abuse lawyers, we hope they respond quickly and decisively. Elderly, ill and disabled nursing home residents are among the most vulnerable people in our society. They deserve better.

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Our Philadelphia nursing home neglect lawyers believe independent rankings are one of the best ways for families to begin their searches for a safe and caring nursing home. So we were dismayed by a Jan. 27 USA Today article showing that about a fifth of nursing homes have consistently received poor ratings from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The poorly rated homes are in every state and the District of Columbia, the newspaper said, and a quarter of a million people live in them. Perhaps most significantly, the report said almost all of the poorly rated homes were owned by for-profit companies.

The Medicare ratings began in 2008, so there are only two years of data to compare, the article said. But in those two years, about a fifth have consistently scored one or two stars on a five-star scale. The ratings are calculated from inspection reports, complaints from patients and families, health and safety violations and more. The lowest-rated homes had an average of 14 problems per home. Medicare spokespeople said the overall ratings have already improved in the past year and may continue to improve in future years, as homes continue trying to improve.

As Pennsylvania nursing home abuse attorneys, we agree that two years isn't much time to improve a rating. But this ignores the question of how those homes came to be poorly rated in the first place. No doubt many homes existed for years or decades before the Medicare ratings started in 2008 -- and so did their problems. Trying to improve now is still a good thing, but it also implies that long-term, difficult-to-solve problems may continue to plague them. We would advise clients to research this very carefully before placing a loved one in such a home.

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A recent Chicago Tribune article called attention to a little-recognized but important problem among nursing home patients: physical and sexual violence between patients. As our Pennsylvania nursing home abuse attorneys know, mentally ill or diminished patients in particular pose a risk to other patients if not properly medicated and supervised. The Chicago Tribune took a look at this problem and published some disturbing results Jan. 26. According to the article, authorities have investigated 86 cases of sexual violence in Chicago nursing homes since 2007, in a quarter of the city's homes. Despite all of those investigations, authorities made an arrest in only one case.

In the majority of the cases, elderly or disabled female residents were attacked by male residents. Only a few cases involved attacks by staff, although the one prosecution the newspaper found was of an orderly. The Tribune said attacks were more likely in homes that housed a high percentage of younger mentally ill people who had been convicted of crimes, some of them violent crimes. Of the 30 homes where sexual assaults happened, 21 were federally rated as below average or well below average on staffing levels. In one case, a 61-year-old woman yelled "No, no, please" as she was assaulted by a 47-year-old man with a history of "inappropriate sexual behavior," but said she was too scared to fight back. The home's police report, filed months later, said she described the sex as consensual.

These stories are deeply disturbing to Philadelphia nursing home negligence lawyers like us. Most stories of nursing home abuse focus on abuses of power by staff, but as this article shows, abuses by other residents can and do happen. Every nursing home resident has a basic right to be safe in his or her home. Homes that fail to provide adequate protection not only fail in their basic duties, but leave themselves vulnerable to administrative or criminal penalties and nursing home negligence lawsuits.

Continue reading "Nursing Homes in and Outside Pennsylvania May Fail to Protect Residents From Sexual Violence" »