Articles Posted in Nursing Home Neglect

When we turn on the news or read the newspaper, it is unfortunate when we hear about the crimes that happen daily to people all across the country. It is even more unfortunate and scary when we hear about people being physically and sexually abused right here in Tennessee. This rape victim case is no exception.

A spring County man, Zephenia Nakia Cooper, was charged with rape Monday, May 10, 2010, after he allegedly went into the Life Care Center nursing home in Rhea County and raped a patient in her late 80s. Dayton police were able to catch him an hour after receiving the call at 5:40 that morning and he was charged with rape later that same day.

Executive Director Kate Swafford of the Life Center in Rhea County said later that, “an unknown male entered our facility around 5 a.m. and entered a female resident’s room. As the man left the facility, associates quickly called the police, who took him into custody.” She also stated that, “We are fully cooperating with the police investigation, and we will vigorously assist the police in the investigation and prosecution of this case”.

The police and the nursing home are now investigating how someone could have gotten into the center at that hour. Copper, has been in jail thirty-three times in recent years for public intoxication, theft, and drug possession. He is being held in the Rhea County jail without any bond. The rape victim has been treated and released from the Rhea County Medical Center.

This case may make many of the residents of Tennessee and people across the country sad and angry about the kind of crimes that happen every day. It is important to ask questions in a case like this as to whether on not this could have been prevented? Hopefully a thorough investigation can develop answers as to how to prevent such a tragic event from happening in the future.
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According to the Johnson City Press, a nursing assistant formerly employed at John M. Reed Nursing Home in Limestone, Tennessee has been charged by the State of Tennessee with five counts of willful abuse, neglect or exploitation of an adult arising out of incidences at the nursing home.

Amanda Tibble, 34, has been charged with abuse and neglect arising out of several instances at the nursing home. Ms. Tibble was supposed to be a caregiver at the facility in charge of providing care to elderly residents. Instead, the indictment shows that Ms. Tibble was abusive, neglectful and a danger to the residents at the nursing home.

The majority of the abuse apparently stems from Ms. Tibble’s continued use of profanity toward the residents that were under her care. At least one incident alleges that Ms. Tibble physically assaulted a resident by twisting a 75 year-old resident’s arm behind his back while cursing him. According to the report, Ms. Tibble has admitted to using profanity and being verbally abusive to at least four different residents of the home.

These allegations are particularly troubling given the access that a nursing assistant has to the elderly under her care and the trust that families put in nursing homes to ensure quality care and treatment of their family members. According to the website for the facility, they pride themselves on “maintaining the dignity and self worth of each of their residents.” Families are drawn to the facility through a website that promotes “spiritual enrichment” and professional quality care in a “secure home-like environment.” Nursing homes, such as the one here, have a duty to hire, train and supervise their employees in charge of giving direct care to the resident to ensure that abuse and neglect do not occur.
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Allegations of nursing home staff taking inappropriate cell phone photos of nursing home residents is again making news, this time in Washington State.

Previous TN nursing home neglect blogs had tracked the developments in the case against two Tennessee female employees at Pigeon Forge nursing home inappropriate nursing home photo investigation where a cell phone was used at the Tennessee nursing home nursing to record nude images of nursing home residents.

In the most recent case of nursing home photos, three employees at a Bremerton nursing home were fired from Kitsap Health & Rehabilitation Center. The nursing home reported the alleged abuse to police and the state Department of Social and Health Services is conducting an investigation. Prosecutors for the County are not charging the three nursing home employees as there appears no crime committed.
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According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS), as outlined in a recent article in the Tennessean, almost 60% of the nursing homes in Tennessee scored below average ratings in staffing levels. Of the 319 nursing homes in the Tennessee, fully one in four received a one star rating out of a possible 5 stars. Patrick Willard, AARP advocacy director, cited this statistic as a sign that we are not doing our job in Tennessee to protect the elderly.

These results come from an annual survey done by the CMMS. Last year, Tennessee nursing homes ranked third worst in the country. That Tennessee inched up the list is not necessarily a sign of improved conditions in the State’s nursing homes and certainly we should not be proud that our nursing homes rank as the 45th best as opposed to the 47th best out of 50 states.

According to the Tennessean, the staffing levels are once again the most detrimental factor in pushing the ratings down in Tennessee’s nursing homes. One factor that plays into the low staffing levels in Tennessee is that state law requires facilities to have less staff than are recommended by Medicare. Medicare sets guidelines on staffing levels that it feels are necessary to properly care for the residents of each particular facility. In Tennessee, the State has largely ignored these staffing recommendations and requires even less staffing than Medicare feels is necessary to properly function and care for patients. According to the survey results, nursing homes in Tennessee have followed suit and mostly staff at levels that Medicare finds insufficient to meet the needs of patients.

Not having a sufficiently number of trained and dedicated employees makes it almost impossible for a nursing home to provide the kind of quality care that the residents deserve. If the home is understaffed and the staff that is available has to work beyond what should be expected of a normal employee, that can lead to the errors in medication and treatment that lower the overall scores for the facilities.
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Following up on our 2009 law blog on Neglect in Kentucky Nursing Homes, a nursing home nurse’s aide formerly employed at the Madison Manor in Richmond, KY pled guilty Monday to reckless abuse and neglect of an adult. These acts were caught on a camera hidden by relatives in their loved one’s nursing home room at Richmond Health and Rehabilitation Complex.

Lamb, the second nurse’s aide at Madison Manor to plead guilty, was sentenced to 12 months in the Madison County Jail, a sentence which may be postponed or commuted if the defendant cooperates in pending cases against other former employees at the Kentucky nursing home.

In other nursing home abuse and neglect news, ABC World News ran a report last week titled Nursing Home Patients Killed by ‘Chemical Restraints’ to bring attention to chemical restraint use in nursing homes. California Attorney General Jerry Brown (previously making an appearance in the Tennessee Employment Law Blog) is pursing charges of elder abuse against three nursing home officials who could face up to 11 years in prison.
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The Tennessee Department of Health suspended admissions to Signature Healthcare in Greeneville, Tennessee effective January 5, 2010. According to an article on TriCities.com, the nursing home was recently surveyed by the department of health and severe shortcomings and violations were found in administration, performance improvement and nursing services.

The act of restricting or suspending admissions to a nursing home is only exercised by the State, through the health department, in drastic cases. The department has the several options available when faced with a noncompliant nursing facility, ranging from citations, fines, orders for re-inspection, and ultimately, closure of the facility. In the instant case, the department suspended admissions and imposed a $1,500.00 fine on the facility. The state has requested a fine of $4,550.00 per day against the facility for the duration that the violations continue.

From a practical standpoint, the facility will continue to operate while they attempt to resolve the violations found by the Tennessee Department of Health; they will simply not be allowed new admissions. This remedy does not provide recompense for people that are already residents of the facility who may be receiving or may have received inadequate care during their stay. This point is important as the violations giving rise to the closure involve the care of the people already in their facility. The department of health will suspend admissions only when violations are found that are or can lead to conditions that are detrimental to the health, safety and welfare of the residents.
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Survivors of a 76-year-old nursing home patient who died of bedsores from nursing home neglect was awarded $18.7M by a New York jury a few days before the new year. The nursing home lawsuit was filed by the family of John Danzy, the deceased, after their father died in a Brooklyn nursing home.

Danzy died in 2003 of an infection the nursing home neglect lawsuit claims was caused by nursing home bedsores. In his short nine months’ stay, Danzy, according to the lawsuit, developed more than 20 nursing home bedsores on his body when the family removed him from the environment of neglect and into a better home.
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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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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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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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