Tennessee Injury Lawyer Blog

Etowah Health Care Center, a 120-bed nursing home in Etwoah, TN, has been ordered by Tennessee Department of Health to cease admissions after alleged physical nursing home abuse by one female nursing home staff member. Fines against the nursing home for violating residents’ rights have been levied and local investigations into the criminal abuse concluded. Tennessee Department of Health officials have assigned a special monitor to review the Etowah, TN nursing home’s operations.

The abuse charges are being made against 37 year-old Joyce Stanley, a certified nursing assistant who allegedly struck a blind nursing home resident with a clipboard and an incontinence pad. It is alos alleged that the resident was slapped and had her hair pulled, though it is unclear from reports when these incidents of abuse occurred. Stanley has been charged by local police with willful and physical abuse and fired from the nursing home.

The abused patient is reported as having suffered no lasting physical harm. Since the nursing home receives Medicare, Medicaid, and VA patients, federal authorities are also conducting a federal investigation of the Tennessee nursing home. No confirmation as of this writing if corrective measures have been taken against other nursing home employees who failed to immediately report the abuse.

Again, as in other nursing home abuse cases Tennessee Law Blog has reported, other nursing home staff was complicit with, or at least kept quiet about, the alleged abuse.

For more information on Tennessee nursing home abuse law, contact our Nashville law offices online or call us at 800-705-2121 for a free consultation with Higgins Firm attorneys to discuss your legal options.

The 2008 fiscal year concluded with $694.5 million settlements from medical device manufacturers and drug pharmaceutical companies accused of misusing government moneys. Of this $694.5 million, $644.5 million came from False Claims lawsuits. These qui tam-driven lawsuits are designed as an incentive for whistleblowers to report their employers' abuse of federal moneys, whether through fraudulent billing, outright theft, or other misuse of federal funds by corporations. Often, and in the case of these three medical companies, these false claims lawsuits involve Medicaid or Medicare.

(Click to read more on Tennessee qui tam/false claim lawsuits.)

The three drug and medical device companies who paid settlements for their illegal influence in garnering government funds were: Merck for illegal incentives to persuade healthcare providers to prescribe its products to Medicaid patients ($361 million), Cephalon for off-label marketing with some of these charges to Medicaid/Medicare ($258 million), and Kyphon (now Medtronic Spine) for coercing hospitals to perform costlier and inappropriate invasive surgery on their patients than the typical outpatient treatment ($75 million).

Over two decades, Congress strengthened the qui tam provisions through its False Claim Act of 1986, allowing recoveries of abused uses of federal funds, ranging from disaster recovery projects to underpayment of royalties on leased federal land. The False Claims Act also increased qui tam whistleblowers’ incentive to 15% – 25% (and up to 30% if the case is pursued by a private qui tam lawyer) of the moneys recovered.

The $694.4 million amount recovered by these three qui tam/false claim lawsuits was published last Monday. A total of $1.34 billion was recovered during the 2008 fiscal year, the majority (78%) from False Claims lawsuits. The other half of the False Claims recoveries involved engineering firms, hospitals, and insurance companies. This additional $1.34 billion brings the total recoveries from qui tam/False Claim lawsuits to $21 billion since 1986.

Whistleblowers filing a False Claims violation with the government or with a private qui tam attorney are afforded certain protections, including confidentiality during the initial phases of an investigation and retaliation protections. These whistleblower protections are only available, though, if proper legal action is taken in the False Claims case. Contact Higgins Firm today to speak confidentially with an experienced qui tam attorney.

FDA officials were busy in the final days of last week as U.S. Marshals under FDA orders seized tainted heparin from Celus Labs in Cincinnati on Thursday. Meanwhile, after three months on market, FDA officials stepped in to help healthcare device manufacturer Covidien recall dangerously mislabeled insulin, a potentially lethal packaging error that has already led to at least one injury.

After the heparin scares earlier this year from FDA-recalled tainted Baxter heparin, I thought Tennessee Law Blog would be finished warning our readers of potential heparin injuries and tainted lots of heparin. Unfortunately, this was not the case as 11 lots of heparin were seized Thursday.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seized 5 lots of Heparin Sodium Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) and 6 lots of Heparin Lithium from Celsus Laboratories Inc. in Cincinnati. These 11 lots were manufactured from Chinese over-sulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS), a crude substance that imitates heparin’s blood thinning activity but whose over-sulfated qualities make the injected anticoagulant dangerous to the patient.

To-date, there have been over 13 recalls of tainted Chinese heparin and over 200 deaths connected to the contaminated heparin. (Click for FDA’s complete list of potentially Chinese heparin tainted medical devices.) In April, FDA inspectors found over 30 pounds of contaminated heparin at Celsus Labs used for two of its medical products. Thursday’s raid represents a more aggressive strategy for the FDA.

Meanwhile, FDA officials alerted patients and doctors of an insulin recall of 4,710 boxes of ReliOn Insulin Syringes (each box containing 100 insulin syringes). Insulin syringes labeled for use with U-40 insulin instead were packaged with syringes for U-100 insulin, or 2.5 times the stated dosage. These mislabeled ReliOn Insulin Syringes pose a danger of “hypoglycemia, serious health consequences, and even death,” according to the FDA.

Recalled boxes of syringes applies to ReliOn Insulin Syringes (31 gauge 1 cc) from lot number 813900 having product identification number 38396-0403-02. ID numbers can be found in upper right-hand corner of the syringe box. These syringes were sold through Wal-Mart stores and Sam’s Clubs.

One adverse report related to one of these recalled insulin syringes has been reported to the FDA.

If your ReliOn syringes bear the affected lot number (lot #813900), please take one of the following actions:

* Call ReliOn 866-780-5436 for replacement instructions on recalled insulin syringe.
* Read for replacement instructions at www.relion.com/recall.
* Return the recalled syringes to the pharmacy where purchased for replacements.

If you have been injured by defective drugs, tainted medicines, or a medical error in Tennessee or surrounding states, our personal injury law team at our Nashville law offices would like to help. Contact our TN personal injury team or give us a call at 800-705-2121.

As a result of our struggling economy many Tennessee Workers have been laid off from work. In fact, over the past couple of months Whirlpool, GM, and Summit have announced layoffs and closings leaving hundreds of Tennesseans without employment.

One benefit that many of these workers may have that they are unaware of is they can often reopen old workmans compensation cases to obtain more money for their injuries. In Tennessee work comp cases are capped if a worker returns to the same employer at the same wage after the injury. However, he or she lost the job to no fault of their own they can ofter reopen their cases for more compensation. There are certain time limits that apply but a lawyer will be able to help you with these issues fairly quickly.

If you had a prior compensation claim and have lost your job within the past year through no fault of your own, please feel free to contact our office to discuss your rights.

Thirty-three year old cerebral palsy sufferer, Robert A. Young, died while under the care of a Chattanooga health facility, though if you'd asked his family members for the month after his death, they'd say he was doing fine. That's because that's what the Chattanooga facility's staff told with each call, though they knew of Young's death. This quiet, and the reason for the quiet, is the subject of his family's $35 million lawsuit filed last week against Health Care Center at Standifer Place, a continuing care retirement community in Chattanooga, TN.

The circumstances surrounding Young’s death while under the care of the Chattanooga facility have been unclear. According to the Hamilton County Medical Examiner’s office, Young died in 2007 from a blunt force trauma to the head. However, exhumed, an autopsy this week is expected to rule his death a homicide. At the time of death, Young was under the care of Tennessee Adult Protective Services and The Health Center at Standifer Place.

The survivors' lawsuit alleges that not only did an employee of the Chattanooga facility kill Young, but that other nursing and staff employees covered this up when Young’s family would call to check on him. According to the lawsuit filed in Tennessee court, “Standifer Place told each [family member], on each call, that [Young] was okay, and to come see him,” for more than a month after Young had died. Meanwhile, Tennessee APS staff had Young buried in a pauper’s grave at Cofer cemetery after his death at Erlanger Hospital where he was admitted for a fever and seizure and where his doctors discovered internal bleeding that neither a seizure or a fever could cause.

The lawsuit filed in Tennessee court says the Chattanooga health facility should be held liable for wrongful death and fourteen other accounts, including assault, battery, fraud, violation of the Tennessee Adult Protection Act, violation of the Tennessee Medical Malpractice Act, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Standifer Place representatives state that their staff caused no harm.

Cases of abuse like this, if true, break my heart and are why I quit as an insurance company lawyer defending and protecting the profits of negligent companies and persons and became a personal injury lawyer. I’ve heard all the lawyer jokes, and even a few specific to Tennessee personal injury lawyers, but at the end of the day, I rest better knowing that my work and the work of my plaintiff’s attorney colleagues in Tennessee and across the nation help bring to light injuries and injustices against the weak and elderly and the unfairly treated worker and help reveal the wrongs of those companies that neglected others’ safety or personal security or that recklessly and dangerously put profits before safety.

If you or your Tennessee loved one has suffered serious injury or, God-forbid, a death under the care of a Tennessee nursing home or long-term care facility, let me and my colleagues at the Higgins Law Firm offer our legal help. For more information on Tennessee nursing home abuse, contact our Nashville law offices online or call us at 800-705-2121 for a free consultation to discuss your legal options.