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

The St. Clair Record had a story about Jewel Lane.  Jewel Lane was living at Maryville Manor when they allowed him to fall and then later allowed him to leave the premises unattended.   Jewel Lane died on April 7 because of exposure to the elements, pulmonary arrest and hypothermia. 
His wife and daughter have filed suit against the nursing home which allowed the man to escape, leading to his death.

The surviving Lanes blame the nursing home for causing their father's and husband's death, saying employees there failed to properly supervise Jewel Lane to prevent him from leaving the nursing home, failed to provide adequate staff to prevent him from leaving the nursing home unattended, failed to protect him from neglect, failed to timely notify his physician of changes in his condition and failed to assure his environment was free of hazards.

In addition, staff at Maryville Manor negligently failed to provide adquate warnings to the proper personnel to quickly locate Jewel Lane; failed to properly secure exits, including windows, so that patients could not escape unnoticed; failed to provide Jewel Lane adequate care so he would not harm himself; and failed to house Jewel Lane in a room that would prevent him from exiting the premises, the complaint says.

KOAT.com, an ABC news website for Albuquerque, ran an article about Roland Werito who had been missing since he left the Paloma Blanca Nursing Home.  Police said the nursing home allowed Werito to leave the facility unattended towards the bike path in his wheelchair just blocks from the nursing home, but his wheel rolled off the path, down the hill and his chair got stuck. No one found him until it was too late.

When Werito didn't show up by 9 p.m., staff members at Paloma Blanca got worried. They called police and Werito's family. Police said someone saw Werito from a nearby Motel 6 and called 911.

Werito died of hypothermia.

DailyComet ran an article about another wandering incident. 

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Houmatoday had an article about the tragic incident involving Etienne Adams, a 93-year-old nursing home resident.  His solo walk outdoors on a freezing night is the subject of a police investigation.  Luckily, the resident is in stable condition at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center after recovering from a fall outside Lafourche Home for the Aged and Infirm.  He is being treated for extended exposure to freezing temperatures. He was unconscious when police found him, and he has been unable to communicate since. Hypothermia had begun to set in.  His temperature dropped to around 83 degrees, while being exposed to outdoor temperatures in the high teens

Police investigators are trying to determine how Adams made it outside without any of the staff noticing and then stayed there without anyone noticing for hours. Officials are not certain how long he was outside of the home.

The nursing home has working security features available that include surveillance cameras, door alarms and a locked fence around the building.  Obviously either the security was not on or it was ignored by the staff.  There is also no video surveillance footage of Adams leaving his room. The nursing home's cameras capture only what it is happening in real time but do not record.

Adams left the facility and fell off of a ramp outside the facility.  There is no record of nursing-home employees looking for Adams outside once they realized he was not in his room.  After being dispatched to the nursing home on a missing-persons complaint, police found Adams on the ground near the back of the property.  Officer David Melancon’s report said “it was apparent that he had been lying on the ground for several hours.

 Here is a follow up article from the DailyComet on the investigation. 
 

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The Daily Hearld had an article recently about a CNA who may get less prison time because of some stupid technicality.   The nurse's assistant will faces considerably less time in prison if convicted of failing to provide proper care to an Itasca nursing home resident who died after wandering outside last winter into the cold.  Prosecutors agreed to drop half of the eight felony counts against CNA Heidi Leon, based on a perfunctory technicality with the wording of the state law regarding licensed nursing homes.  Leon faces five years - instead of 14 - if convicted of the remaining elderly neglect and obstructing justice charges.

Leon pleaded not guilty but has remained in the DuPage County jail on a $99,999 bond since her March 4 arrest. She must post 10 percent to be set free.  Leon is accused of failing to check in on 89-year-old Sarah Wentworth early Feb. 5 after an alarm alerted staff at The Arbor of Itasca that an outside door had opened.  Leon turned off the alarm and went back to watching back-to-back episodes of "Dog the Bounty Hunter."   She also is charged with lying to police when they said she told them she saw Wentworth in her bed during a 3 a.m. well-being check.

Wentworth was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet because she suffered from dementia and was prone to wandering. The staff found her body several hours later in the outside courtyard in near-freezing temperatures.  Judge Dockery granted Leon's lawyers and their investigators the authority to tour The Arbor so they could photograph, measure and otherwise document the nurse's station, television area, Wentworth's room and the hallway she traveled that leads to the outdoor courtyard. The Arbor fought the move, despite having earlier allowed civil attorneys for Wentworth's daughters to similarly document the facility.

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Serita Cheryl Evans has filed a nursing home wrongful death lawsuit against a North Carolina facility, Primrose Retirement Villa IV,  that allowed her mother to wander out at night disoriented, fall into a ravine and die from a head injury.  The lawsuit was filed following the death of Carrie “Christine” Evans, whose body was found behind the facility on February 2.

Wandering from a long-term care facility, often referred to as nursing home elopement, can result in serious injuries like fractures from falls, heat stroke or hypothermia in extreme weather conditions. It is generally accepted that preventative measures by a nursing home can eliminate or greatly reduce the risk of serious injuries from nursing home wandering. Facilities can train staff, move high risk patients near the nurses stations, use door alarms and security cameras and lock sections of the nursing home where residents who are prone to wander are housed.

According to the complaint, Carrie Evans was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and hypertension, required medication to stay lucid and had problems sleeping that would increase the risk that she may attempt to wander from the nursing home. Primrose staff was well aware of her propensity to wander off, but did nothing to stop it.   There were no staff members on duty that evening to give Evans her medication, and a security system designed to residents from wandering off was broken and had not been inspected since 2005.

Following Evans’ death, the Harnett County Department of Social Services has levied fines against the Primrose facility for multiple safety violations, including a fine for not properly supervising residents in a situation that leads to severe injury, and for not correcting care quality issues that the state has identified within a reasonable amount of time.

The agency’s inspectors also noted a lack of training for non-licensed staff at the facility on several occasions, and the state has felt the need to conduct 28 investigations on Primrose in the last two years, compared to the state standard of four investigations per year.

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CBS2Chicago had a tragic story of a nursing home resident found on train tracks near the facility.  There is no excuse for this kind of neglect and lack of supervision.  The nursing home has been sued for negligence after a resident with dementia was discovered lying on train tracks and suffering from cold exposure eight hours after wandering off during a group field trip. McCauley suffered from various psychological and physical conditions, severe dementia and Alzheimer's disease and required full-time supervision by staff.

Wayne Marz, the guardian of Margaret McCauley, filed the suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Sunrise Senior Living Services, the Brighton Gardens Assisted Living of Orland Park and the home's Activity Director Debra Ann Adler, following the Dec. 2, 2007 incident that left the woman with significant injuries.

McCauley wandered away unnoticed and was found approximately eight hours later just one mile away, lying on train tracks with visible injuries she had suffered from falling down and from being exposed to cold temperatures for an extended amount of time.

The suit alleges Adler and the nursing home failed to properly monitor McCauley; failed to assess her risk of wandering off; failed to provide an adequate number of staff for residents and failed to ensure her safety.  The center also failed to take proper steps to ensure McCauley's safe return after discovering she was missing.

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I doubt that the facility even knew he was missing.  Staten Island Live had a story about a resident who walked away from the facility on Friday but the facility failed to either recognize that he was missing or failed to contact the police or his family for 48 hours.  This is outrageous but not a surprise knowing how short staffed most facilities are these days.

The man, identified as Richard Constable, 66, walked off the grounds of the 200-bed facility sometime Friday but staffers didn't call police until Sunday morning, when a therapist finally noticed his patient was missing a session.

"They felt they would get a better [police] response if they waited until Sunday," said Claudia Hutton, spokeswoman for the state Health Department that licensed the facility. "We were surprised by that. You call the police as soon as you realize a person is missing."  Hutton, of the Health Department, said Lakeside probably would be given a citation in the case, and called the response "inappropriate policy."  Probably?  Why not definitely?

Lakeside has drawn complaints from neighbors who say the residents there are publicly drunk, urinate on lawns and litter properties with trash and cigarette butts. But Anthony Caccamo, who lives across the street, said the patients aren't the problem.

"It's the staff; they're just nasty, miserable people," said Caccamo, 35. "They don't care."

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