December 24, 2009

Tennessee Trane Employees may be able to re-open prior workmens compensation cases

It has just been reported that the Trane plant in Clarksville, TN will layoff 113 employees. A layoff is never easy but it can be especially difficult during the holiday season. Hopefully, as the economy picks up the company will be able to bring some of these employees back to work.

The employees will receive some help through unemployment benefits. Also, if any of the employees have had a prior workers compensation claim they may be able to reopen the claim and get more money. Specifically, in Tennessee if you have a workers compensation claim the amount of money you receive is often capped if you return to your same employer. However, if you later loose the job through no fault of your own the case can ofter be reopened to get money above the cap. This is known as reconsideration.

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December 11, 2009

Nursing Home Neglect Begins with Nursing Home Policy - NHC's Latest Disgrace

Nashville, TN’s own Nashville Scene uncovered some startling news about a Bristol, VA nursing home run by Tennessee’s own infamous National Healthcare Corp (NHC). The Murfreesboro, TN nursing home chain has been the subject of previous Tennessee Law Blogs as a means to spread the word about nursing home falls and signs of neglect after a resident died shortly after his one-month stay at NHC McMinnville, TN. (This was two years after the NHC nursing home chain’s fire at its Nashville, TN facility for which the company was found liable. Read original Tennessee Law Blog on NHC nursing home death.)

In recent news, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services surveyed the Virginia NHC nursing home's employees after a sexual abuse complaint was filed against a staffer, a survey that the Scene reporters procured and whose results were shocking. Instead of the sexual abuse allegations leading to swift education to address the persistent problem, the survey found that 21 of the 35 nursing home employees interviewed were oblivious to their legal requirement to report suspicions of abuse to state agencies.

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December 10, 2009

Asbestos Lawsuit Settlement with
Smithsonian Sheds Light on a National Workplace Cancer

The Smithsonian settled an asbestos lawsuit with a former employee for $233,000 and health insurance after the museum’s worker was diagnosed last year with asbestosis. The employee, Richard Pullman, 54, worked for 28 years at the museum, installing exhibits. This required drilling and sawing interior walls containing asbestos, a risk Pullman and other workers were first made aware of in 2008.

A Smithsonian spokeswoman has said that the settlement is not an admission of guilt, an odd statement given that Mr. Pullman has worked the majority of his life at the National Air and Space Museum and that inhaling asbestos, speaking realistically, the only cause of asbestosis.

Initially, Mr. Pullman was denied a worker's compensation coverage claim for asbestosis, though he would win on appeal. He is now allowed worker's compensation for treatment of asbestosis-related injury and benefits if he becomes disabled or dies from the disease.

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December 5, 2009

State of Kentucky Nursing Homes

News last week that Madison Manor in Richmond, KY might lose its Medicare/Medicaid certification drew the attention of nursing home advocates and our KY nursing home abuse lawyers at the Higgins Firm.

A year-long study concluded last August by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) listed Richmond Health and Rehabilitation Complex — a.k.a. Madison Manor — among the worst nursing homes in the nation.

Madison Manor nursing home was not alone.

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December 1, 2009

Nursing Home Falls Covered in Series on Nursing Home Abuse

Readers of the nursing home abuse blogs at our Tennessee Injury Law Blog may be interested in an ongoing series by the Star Tribune entitled “Deadly Falls”. The Minnesota newspaper article details the dangers of these forms of nursing home neglect, which include permanent injury and life-threatening injuries, as well as the profit-based logic that defines many nursing homes’ decisions to have plans to prevent falls that do not include increasing staffing.

Each year, over 100 nursing home residents die in Minnesota after suffering a fall in the nursing home. According to the Star Tribune’s investigation of death certificates of MN nursing home residents from 2002-2008, the state averages a nursing home resident death every two days from nursing home falls, for a total of over 1,000 nursing home deaths in Minnesota alone in this period.

Some of these nursing home deaths from falls are quick, such as when severe internal bleeding occurs or fragile bones break in a resident’s neck. More often, the fall causes long-term, deleterious injury, leaving the resident bedridden in extreme pain, if conscious. Too often, the fall sets off what the reporters call, poetically and accurately, “a deadly systemic chain reaction, hastening the end of life."

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