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

Chicago Tribune had a scary article about Federal, state and county officials finding dozens of resdients with outstanding arrest warrants and wanted on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to burglary to assault.  The raids involved about 20 federal marshals and Cook County sheriff's police.  Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan initiated the sweep in response to Tribune investigative reports about Illinois nursing facilities that house high numbers of felons and sex offenders.

Five people were arrested, including a sex offender wanted in another state for failing to register. In three cases, the residents were too sick to be taken into custody, and the other warrants were not immediately enforceable because they were issued in other jurisdictions.  The team found nine people with outstanding warrants when it swept Columbus Park Nursing & Rehabilitation Center on Chicago's West Side and another nine at Heather Health Center in Harvey.

Authorities also examined records for Somerset Place on the North Side and discovered three residents with outstanding warrants, but jurisdictional limits prevented immediate arrests.

The number of felons known to be living in Illinois nursing homes has grown as the state increasingly relied on the facilities to house younger psychiatric patients, thousands of whom have criminal records.  The Tribune reported that Illinois State Police once ran similar sweeps of nursing homes for felons with outstanding warrants and unregistered sex offenders. From January 2005 through June 2006, when 20 northern Illinois nursing homes were swept and roughly 80 fugitives and sex offenders removed, state police in that region recorded a nearly 67 percent decrease in nursing home abuse and neglect complaints, according to a department citation issued to the sweeps unit.   But the program was halted after five years in 2006 because federal regulators questioned whether the sweeps were an appropriate use of Medicaid anti-fraud funds. State police were not part of Tuesday's sweeps.

The Tribune has reported that the criminal background checks and risk assessments carried out for new residents of the state's nursing homes were riddled with errors and omissions.

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The Sun-Sentinel had a scary story about convicted felons working in Florida's nursing homes.  The articles states that Florida seniors and disabled adults too frail to live on their own have been beaten, neglected and robbed by caregivers with criminal records. More than 3,500 people with criminal records — including rape, robbery and murder — have been hired to work at nursing homes.  Hundreds more slipped through because employers failed to check their backgrounds or kept them on the job despite their criminal past.

Florida has a patchwork of controls for checking caregivers of the elderly that seems to put more emphasis on protecting against embezzlement than safeguarding patients. Inconsistencies in state law are glaring — facility owners, administrators and people who handle money require a nationwide FBI check, but not employees caring for patients. With some exceptions, they are checked only for crimes in Florida.

Under Florida law, certain crimes disqualify someone from working with seniors or the disabled unless they obtain an exemption by showing evidence of rehabilitation. Until this year, the disqualifying offenses did not include financial crimes that can lead to abuse and exploitation. An expanded list takes effect Thursday — eight years after a committee of prosecutors and state regulators recommended adding crimes such as burglary, fraud and forgery.

Patients and their families have no way of checking employees' criminal histories. Personnel files are confidential, as they are for any private business.  State inspectors are supposed to ensure screening requirements are met but inspect nursing homes on average only once a year and assisted living facilities every other year. Inspection data shows the system fails to weed out employees with disqualifying records and is slow to remove them once hired.

"When you're under the gun of trying to find a place for your relative and they're in the hospital and they're dying, it's the last thing on your mind as to whether it's a safe facility," he said. "You assume with the state regulating them, that's a given."
 

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