South Carolina Nursing Home Blog : South Carolina Nursing Home Lawyer & Attorney : Poliakoff & Associates Law Firm : Elderly Care, Senior Care

NBC New York had the tragic and mysterious story about the investigation into and death of Adriana Neagoe.  Midway Nursing Home is facing a State investigation, and a lawsuit about how the 65-year-old resident could have dropped to the floor not once, but twice, the second time fatally.  Adriana Neagoe's family had decided on Midway Nursing Home after she fainted in front of her church and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery to treat it left her paralyzed.  Neagoe's family says surgery left her able to move only one arm. So it was a surprise when she was injured in the spring of 2008 and they say nursing home staff told them she'd toppled off a bed surrounded by guard rails.

"She cannot fall because she could not move. She was paralyzed," says the victim's nephew Cristin Buiciuc. What does he say really happened? The Romanian immigrant had to be mechanically hoisted up for bathing and so bed sheets could be changed. "They drop her from like five feet. They drop her on her head. That's what she told me before she died," says Buiciuc.

After she hit the floor that second time, Buiciuc, who is also executor of her estate, says he was determined never to bring her back to Midway Nursing Home. It was August 8, 2008. Adriana Neagoe died six days later, still at Elmhurst General Hospital where she'd been rushed for treatment of severe head injuries, of what her family says were complications from them.

After her death, relatives kept their concerns private for more than a year, until the nursing home thought it would be a good idea to send a final bill, for $51,749. "The policy is clearly 'kill them and bill them,' " says family attorney Kenneth M. Mollins, "they negligently kill this woman. They hurt her first, then they hurt her bad enough to kill her and it did kill her the second time, and then they're billing her."

Now the family has sued to reverse that huge final bill and for punitive damages, which means Midway officials might be compelled to explain what happened in their care--under oath. There's little doubt that Midway was required to be reported to the State--and were not.

State Health Department files show Midway has a record in recent years of 43 complaints and incidents for every 100 beds--almost double the statewide average.

Midway Executive Director Moshe Kalter and Administrator Burt Kohn declined repeated requests for response to the family's allegations.

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The family of a 69-year-old woman has filed a lawsuit against a Chicago nursing home for failing to protect her from being sexually assaulted by a 21-year-old mentally ill resident.  Maplewood Care's administrator tried to cover up a rape by calling it consensual sex.  It is an example of how mixing frail senior citizens and younger mentally ill residents in nursing homes can lead to violence if facilities do not monitor potentially dangerous residents.

"The only possible reason that you would be in this situation is a profit motive," attorney for the family said. "You want more residents in your facility, but you're unwilling to pay for the necessary elements to protect all the residents."

Christopher Shelton had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with aggression when he was admitted to the nursing home in November.  Shelton, a convicted felon and a former resident of the Elgin facility, was readmitted to the nursing home without a proper review of his criminal history. Had the facility checked, it would have discovered Shelton had an outstanding arrest warrant on felony battery charges. The state report showed he had told the nursing home staff in December that he was sexually frustrated, but the facility failed to monitor him.

Shelton was missing at bed check, but no search was made or alarm sounded to alert residents and staff that a young, aggressive, sexually frustrated, convicted felon was prowling the halls of the nursing home. Later, a night shift nurse heard an elderly woman moaning and crying.  The nurse found Shelton in her bathroom, where he was calling 911 to report that someone was attacking the woman.  Paramedics and an emergency room doctor later examined the woman and noted signs of sexual trauma.  Doyle who was the Administrator at the facility downplayed the encounter as consensual sex in a report to the state and encouraged employees to lie about it to cover it up.

The state and federal governments only fined the nursing home $44,400 for violations related to the incident.

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The Edmond Sun had a recent article about a 131 page investigative report that supports complaints against a nursing home in Oklahoma.  One of the complaints includes a lack of an effective system for investigating and reporting abuse and failure to consult with a resident’s physician when there was an injury.  The investigation was triggered by a Sept. 16, 2008, incident at Grace Living Center. On that day, a resident, Lester Pendergraft, allegedly sexually assaulted a 67-year-old resident.   Pendergraft has been charged with one count of rape by instrumentation.

A meager $10,000 penalty resulting from the investigation has been proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

Documentation showed the victim’s daughter was notified at 8:45 a.m., 1 hour and 35 minutes after the incident occurred at 7:10 a.m. Edmond Police arrived shortly after they were notified, at about 9 a.m. The victim’s doctor was called between 8:15-8:25 a.m., shortly after he arrived at his office.

On Sept. 25, the detective assigned to the case said, “The facility did a poor job of protecting the evidence.” He said facility staff threw away evidence and washed the victim’s bed linens and clothing and Pendergraft’s clothing.   Why would the facility do that unless they were trying to cover up what happened?

According to the report, the facility’s staff should immediately notify the director of nurses and the doctor, get the resident out of harm’s way and assess the resident whenthere is an allegation of abuse or neglect.  “The resident was not assessed timely after the incident,” the report stated.

The detective said someone in charge said to another officer that he felt  “The situation was being blown out of proportion.”

Citizen advocate Wes Bledsoe, founder of A Perfect Cause, an advocacy organization for disability and elder rights, said when he read the report he was “deeply disturbed."  Bledsoe said what was most shocking was that the incident happened in the first place, that evidence was destroyed with either intent or by incompetence and that a staff member voiced concern about police blowing the situation out of proportion.  Furthermore, there were warning signs before the incident that Pendergraft posed a threat to residents. Pendergraft was entering rooms of residents without reason or explanation who could not call out for help.

According to the report, a certified nurse aide reported before the Sept. 16 incident that she observed Pendergraft touch another resident who was dependent on staff for assistance. The same day, Pendergraft was seen pulling up the shirt of still another resident who was dependent on staff for assistance.

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Oregon Live.com had an article about a Portland judge who ordered the jailing of the former nursing director of a Northeast Portland nursing home where a 60-year-old woman cried in pain with broken legs for five days before staff called an ambulance.

Suzanne Kay Ruddell was found guilty of felony criminal mistreatment by a jury.  She must serve 19 months of prison time and three years probation for her role in the death of Linda Ober, who was dropped by aides while being moved into her bed.  The nursing home covered up the fal and failed to get x-rays or notify the family as required by law.

Ruddell waited five days before ordering X-rays for Ober despite multiple reports from different staffers that Ober was screaming or crying in pain. Ober died after a surgery to repair two shattered leg bones.

Sara Cunningham, one of Ober's five adult children, said the nursing home failed to notify them.  The family never got a chance to say goodbye.   "It wasn't until she'd endured five days of excruciating pain that my mom was taken to the hospital," she said. "This is inexcusable, especially for a nurse who's supposed to help people."

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Koco.com,  a news website from Oklahoma City, had an article about a resident being physically abused with video evidencing significant bruises.  The article states that the resident's family is looking for answers after a woman was found covered in bruises while she was staying in a Norman nursing home.

The workers at the Whispering Pines Nursing Home said Carol Crow, 60, was injured when she fell but did not provide any details to support this conclusion.  The family doesn't believe the injuries could come from a fall. The family is offering a reward for information because the Department of Human Service has refused to investigate.

"It was very traumatizing. She just cried the whole time," said Julie Glass, Carol's daughter. "She had bruising all the way around her face, all the way completely down her chest and around her neck."

"Her story is that a man knocked her down, got on top of her and beat her unconscious," said Jack Crow.  The family said they took their story to DHS, which sent them a letter saying that it wouldn't open a case because there was no indication of abuse.

The Crow family offered a $2,500 reward for information. They posted signs around Norman and in front of the nursing center. The sign posting led to a confrontation with Whispering Pines representatives.

"I'm angry at the fact that I don't know what they're covering up," said Glass. "The people that are left there have no one. They have no one to protect them."

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Here is another article about a nursing home's failure to prevent a resident from falling and then failing to intervene or inform the family. 

The family was never told that their 60-year-old mother had broken both legs in a fall and died of complications.  Eventually,  the family discovered the horrific details. Their mother, Linda Ober, had been dropped by staff at the nursing home where she lived and left to moan for help in her bed for five days.

Employees tried to cover up the injury by giving her pain medication and telling her that her memory of being dropped as they moved her out of her wheelchair was simply a bad dream.  The family is haunted by the thought that her mother spent her final hours wondering why her daughter didn't come to see her. According to the suit, the resident  told hospital staff that they didn't need to call her daughter, because nursing-home employees said they would. Cunningham, who lives a mile from the nursing home, said she was not told.

"I wasn't there to hold her hand," said Cunningham, breaking into tears. "All I needed was a phone call."

Thomas D'Amore, the attorney representing Cunningham and her siblings, said Ober's death was the result of having too few staff and not adequately training them to care for the center's residents. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a review of the Gateway nursing home about the time of Ober's death found that the number of nurse-hours per resident was below the state average by 33 percent.

She was critically injured Oct. 29, 2006, when two employees dropped her after improperly wrapping a sling around her torso to move her from her wheelchair to her bed, according to the suit.   X-rays show Ober's badly broken legs. In one X-ray, her femur is jutting away from its normal position by 45 degrees. According to a summary of a state investigation that D'Amore provided, staff who treated Ober at Mount Hood Medical Center said Ober's pain was "off the scale" and that "you could feel the bones in her legs moving in your hands, and they were crunching."

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