In 2010, almost 6 million reports of elder abuse were reported, which as high as the number may sound may just be the tip of the iceberg. The National Center on Elder Abuse is convinced this number is way below the actual amount of victims that are being abused as…
I was really excited to learn about a new web tool for families seeking information about a particular nursing home. Created by ProPublica, Nursing Home Inspect, is essentially a searchable database of information collected from nursing home inspection data. The free, user-friendly database allows families to access information from nursing…
No one ever said that getting old was easy– for the person— or their family. As we age, our physical and psychological needs change dramatically. Understanding these changes and providing for these needs is imperative for every person to live life to its fullest. Even with the best care, the…
In California, the never ending quest to chop money from state budgets has taken a new turn as state prison officials have initiated a new medical parole program which allows medically incapacitated felons to utilize the services of private nursing homes. Starting in 2010, the California Correctional system placed 29…
Number of nursing homes in Illinois: 789 Patients living in Illinois nursing homes: 75,218 Occupancy rates of Illinois nursing homes: 78.6% Average number of deficiencies at each Illinois nursing home: 9.3 Percent of Illinois nursing homes with serious deficiencies for actual harm to patient: 42.7% Most common deficiencies at Illinois…
Yesterday I was contacted by the daughter of a nursing home patient who died after suffering a fall in the bathroom of a well-known– and highly rated– nursing home in Chicago. After several minutes of discussion about her her father’s physical condition and her recollection of safeguards that were to…
One of the most frequent claims I hear from nursing homes and hospitals concerning pending litigation is how the lawsuits are simply isolated events and are not really indicative of the type of care that they provide to their patients. While such claims may indeed be very true at some…
Compared to non-profit and government controlled peers, big-chain nursing homes simply provide inferior patient care. Period. In one of the first studies directly comparing patient care provided by non-profits operations vs. nursing home conglomerates (the ten largest for-profit chains), an analysis conducted by University of California San Francisco (UCSF) clearly…
When it comes to ensuring that nursing homes are compliant with regulations to protect patients, the enforcement of such provisions falls primarily on agencies within the state. When violations are discovered agencies have several options available to them in their arsenal including issuing a written citation that could become part…
We’ve had a lot of discussion regarding the sizable nursing home negligence verdict in West Virginia against Heartland of Charleston and the parent company HCR Manor Care. If you haven’t heard about this landmark nursing home verdict, jurors awarded $91.5 million to the family of a patient at the facility…