Articles Posted in Nursing Home Abuse

Investigation in a case of nursing home abuse at Genesee County Nursing Home, NY, led to the arrest of 25 year old Sarah Waclawski a certified nurse’s aid, for causing personal injury to a resident of the nursing home. The nurse’s aid was taking care of a 100 year old elderly patient with dementia and didn’t follow safety protocol when moving the patient from her bed to her wheelchair. She decided to move the patient from the wheelchair to the bed and back from the bed to the chair. The patient fell on the floor, hitting her head on the wheelchair and sustained lacerations and pain due to the negligence of the nurse’s aid.
In a comment in the Press Release, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said “My Office Will Prosecute Cases Of Nursing Home Abuse And Make It Clear That This Will Not Be Tolerated”

Financial abuse or financial exploitation of the elderly is unfortunately all too common in nursing homes or elderly facilities. According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, Bureau of Justice Statistics, financial abuse represents approximately 12% of reported elder abuse cases.

Stephanie Benodin, a former personal care assistant at The Tuttle Center, a life care retirement community that is part of The Amsterdam at Harborside in Port Washington, N.Y admitted that she took the checkbook of her victim an 88 year old resident of the nursing home and wrote a check of $10K in the name of her mother. She then deposited the check in her mother’s account but it was returned for insufficient funds.The 26-year-old Queens resident pleaded guilty to Attempted Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree in Nassau County District Court before Judge Susan T. Kluewer. Sentencing is set for April 9.

See Press Release

A fight between residents in a NYC nursing home lead to the death of one of them. Heraldo Gonzalds 56, a resident of the New Gloria’s Manor Home for Adults, in Belle Arbor, Queens, New York was beaten so severely by 54 year old Bienvenido Cruz, another resident, that he was transferred to a hospital and died of his injuries several days after the fight. (see New York Daily News)

New York Nursing home staff do not seem to be prepared to handle cases of residents being abused by other residents. A few months ago in a previous blog we wrote about another fight in a Queens nursing home that also ended with the death of one of the patients.

With a growing number of the older population suffering from Alzheimer, dementia or traumatic stress disorder, residents of nursing homes can be at risk of other residents violence. It is very difficult to know exactly the extend of this type of abuse because only fights resulting in severe injury or death are reported.

Unnecessary use of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs by nursing homes has lead to abuse and has been a preoccupation of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) for many years. A proposal for a new rule to modify access to antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs was published by the CMS last month. The CMS proposes to eliminate the antidepressant drugs and some immunosuppressant drugs from the list of protective classes by the beginning of 2015. The antipsychotic drugs would be removed from the protected list a year after to facilitate medication transition for people taking these drugs. While some believe that this change of policy would reduce the overuse and misuse of antipsychotic drugs by nursing homes others believe that unnecessary change of antipsychotic drugs in a patient can have very negative consequences for his or her health. What do you think?

The CMS is accepting comments on this proposal until March 7th 2014.

Read more in Annals of Long Term Care

Elder abuse and elder fraud by family caregivers or acquaintances are unfortunately getting more and more common and not enough is being done to stop this epidemic.

Family members are often the first appointed guardians and serve as representative payees when a person is declared incapacitated. In the US 85% of the 5.9 million Social Security payees are family members. Unfortunately payees are not being thoroughly checked and abuse is on the rise.

In a recent article BARBARA LAKER and WENDY RUDERMAN from the Philadelphia Daily News describe recent cases of elderly or disabled people who have been abused and neglected by family members or acquaintances who stole their money.

To prevent nursing home neglect or abuse, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the States send teams of inspectors to survey nursing homes on a regular basis to assure that facilities meet the quality of care standard required by Medicare and Medicaid.

These teams look for deficiencies in the quality of care provided to their elderly patients and for deficiencies in the safety requirements such as protection from fire hazards. Most nursing homes have some deficiencies. The national average of deficiency per inspection is 6 to 7 per nursing home. However a minority of nursing homes have more than twice the average number of deficiencies and have more serious problem than others, including reports of harm and injury to patients.

Nursing homes that have a pattern of serious problems for more than 3 years are enlisted in the Special Focus Facility Initiative and can be barred from Medicare and Medicaid participation if they don’t address their problems within a reasonable period of time.