Lawyer Resources for Nursing Home Abuse

Family members of nursing home residents offered powerful testimony about neglect and abuse in some facilities, but legislation to limit the impact of a nursing home lawsuit still passed the Florida Senate Rules Committee on April 15. The next stop is the Senate Floor. Although the bill has been stuck in the House, representatives could agree to the Senate version.

Siblings File Lawsuit after Mother’s Rape

One brother and sister related that their mother was subject to rape in 2002 at a Jacksonville Facility when another patient with a history of sexual attacks assaulted her. Although they were awarded a $750,000 judgment in a nursing home lawsuit, they never collected anything after the facility closed. They think the legislation could mean people will have even more trouble filing lawsuits if it passes. Their motivation in filing the lawsuit was to change the culture, and they were not concerned with the money. The brother questioned the panel as to who would benefit from the legislation. He feels that the nursing homes and administrators are being protected unfairly and that the bill does not look out for the best interests of patients.

A Deer Park, Cleveland nursing home has made it onto a federal watch list due to significant nursing home violations.

East Galbraith Health Care Center

The East Galbraith Health Care Center is a 140-bed nursing home facility in Cleveland, and there was a time not so long ago when the facility was one of the most respected in the area. That all changed in 2012 after three consecutive inspections uncovered significant transgressions as well as an unwillingness to conform to the requirements put forth by the inspector after the first two violation-plagued inspections. The federal watchdog group was aware of the nursing home after the second inspection and put it on the watch list after the third.

Medical malpractice lawsuits are some of the most complex types of civil suits and can take years to get to the settlement stage, if they ever get to that point. There is a lot of work involved and special litigation procedures that must be followed. If you are a victim of medical malpractice in Illinois, understand that your case will take time to pursue and get ready to hang in there for the long haul and often to trial.

Illinois Medical Malpractice Cases

Medical malpractice cases are not as cut and dry as headlines often make them seem. While large verdicts of millions of dollars often make the news, what you do not hear about is all the work that went into the case, the time it took and how many other similar cases were lost once they went to trial. The Jury Verdict Reporter did an analysis on medical malpractice cases over a five-year period, 2002-2007, both in Cook County and throughout the rest of Illinois. The breakdown shows how many cases were won, what the median and average verdict awards were and the amount of the highest award each year. Some interesting numbers from that report:

When the subject of nursing homes is being discussed, the topic of paying for nursing home care soon follows and thereafter inevitably, Medicaid. As the single largest payer for nursing home care, discussing Medicaid is a logical turn. What often goes unsaid though is the complexity of the Medicaid qualification process and what options exist to help families through this endeavor.

Surprisingly there are many different sources that claim to provide assistance in helping individuals to qualify for Medicaid. Less surprising is that many of these sources also stand to gain from helping the applicant qualify. This is not to say that these sources are without value; they can and do provide useful information and are of real assistance. What is required is for the applicant to understand Medicaid eligibility and to understand the motivations of their potential sources of Medicaid planning assistance. While this article touches on these subjects, a more detailed examination of 2013 Medicaid eligibility and a comparison table of Medicaid planning assistance options are available.

Medicaid eligibility is determined differently by each state but largely it is the applicant’s income and financial resources that are the determining factors. In 2013, a rule of thumb is that single applicants must have less than $2,130 / month in income and less than $2,000 in countable financial resources. Both monthly income and countable financial resources are open to a degree of interpretation and both of those numbers can vary up or down depending on one’s state of residence and the type of Medicaid for which they are applying.

Many people who hear I’m a lawyer think I’m always focused on one thing: suing whoever I can.  As a lawyer who handles personal injury and nursing home negligence cases, I guess ‘suing’ or sort of goes with the territory. But the truth both as a lawyer and as a businessman I want to pursue meritorious cases where the filing of a lawsuit actually serves the purpose of getting compensation for my clients.

Most non-lawyers fail to recognize that the filing of lawsuits– and the entire litigation process is a time consuming and expensive process.  Since I handled cases on a contingency fee basis, unless there is an obvious benefit to my client– I’m generally not inclined to spend thousands of dollar and pour in weeks, months — or (gulp) years worth of work.  Similarly, with cases involving questionable liability– what the person we’re pursing did wrongly or negligently– I’m generally inclined not to pursue the matter in court.

Not every case is worth pursuing

Take a look at our other infographics here.

When a nursing home is labeled as a “Special Focus Facility” (SFF) by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, it is the equivalent of a final warning to shape up or ship out. These are the nursing homes that have continuously poor performance and a history of violations. For many nursing homes, being labeled a SFF is the last stop before they are closed all together.

History Of SFF

The Special Focus Facilities program was started back in 1998 to bring needed attention to nursing homes that were consistently below par in performance and had numerous violations related to inferior patient care. At the beginning, each state submitted their two worst offenders to be in the program, but in 2005, that number was increased to six. The program is geared to motivate these nursing homes into improving their care by putting them on this watch list. Once they are on the SFF list, they are inspected twice as often and are subject to higher fines if there are violations. It takes 18 months with three inspections or surveys for them to be eligible to be removed from the list. However, this means they will have had to improve enough to removed. If not, they are either retained as a SFF or they can be denied Medicare and Medicaid payments and eligibility. There are facilities that take this labeling seriously and improve their performance. After all, most of these are for-profit businesses. According to a report done by the Center for Medicare Advocacy earlier this year, 98% of the homes on the SFF list are for-profit businesses. These are homes that are most likely run by large conglomerates and will tarnish the companies name by being on the list of the poorest run homes in the country. Needless to say, if a facility was to loose its Medicare funding, it most likely would be closed very quickly and swept under the corporate rug.