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

The Madison Record had an article about a recent nursing home jury verdict.  The jury awarded Emons $5,000 his claim of wrongful death and $15,000 for what he claimed was a violation of the Nursing Home Care Act.   Clifford Emons sued the nursing home on behalf of the estate of Jane Schwartz.   According to court documents, Jane Schwartz fell while at the Alton facility, breaking her wrist and hip. It took the jury less than two hours to deliberate in a negligence suit against Rosewood Care Center of Alton.  The jury only had to consider what damages to award after Madison County Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian struck the defendant's pleadings on the negligence issue and directed the verdict on the liability issues for the plaintiff.

It is the second verdict this year against the Rosewood Care Center chain in Madison County. Another negligence suit against the nursing home's Edwardsville location went to trial earlier this year in Madison County Circuit Judge David Hylla's courtroom.  That suit was also brought on behalf of an estate, by plaintiff Paul Graves on behalf of his deceased father. The jury in the Graves' suit found for Paul Graves and awarded damages totaling about $150,000 over his father's fractured hip.

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N.Y Times had a great article discussing the unpredictable impact of falls in the elderly population.  Because of the complex nature of the difficulties that can result from falls, there is a significant need for nursing homes to invest in adequate fall prevention which always includes hiring competent and caring nurses to supervise at risk residents. Residents who suffers falls sometimes never recover because of muscles atrophying or because of the increased lack of mobility causes pneumonia and other respiratory problems.

Once considered an inevitable part of aging, falls are now recognized as complex, preventable events with multiple causes and consequences, calling for a wide range of interventions, both psychological and physiological, that most patients never receive.

All falls need to be taken as seriously as diabetes because they can be a real warning sign that something serious is wrong.   In the article, Dr. Mary E. Tinetti, a falls expert at Yale University medical school, compared falls to strokes in their harmfulness.  Each year, 1.8 million Americans over age 65 are injured in falls, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some rebound as if the injury never happened. But for some, the fall sets off a downward spiral of physical and emotional problems — including pneumonia, depression, social isolation, infection and muscle loss — that become too much for their bodies to withstand.

Psychological factors can be as devastating as the physical trauma, Dr. Tinetti said. “It’s the fear of falling, the lost confidence. Good walkers stop walking, stop going to church. They become socially isolated and depressed.”

The period of immobility after a fall is particularly dangerous, said Dr. Gray-Miceli, whose research includes studying a group of patients after falls. “Being immobile, you’re not taking deep breaths, you’re more prone to orthostatic pneumonia, or older people can develop urinary incontinence. And that can have a whole cascade of emotional consequences as well as the physical consequences, such as skin breakdown, pressure sores, bladder infection, lung infection.

Patients’ pessimism can be self-fulfilling, because they may not walk to the extent they can. “Their stride becomes shorter,” Dr. Morrison said. “They don’t use their lungs.”

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The Bush Administration has decided to change the Medicare rules to prevent payment of "preventable" injuries.  Who decides what is preventable? How is that decided?  Here is part of the article I read:

In a significant policy change, Bush administration officials say that Medicare will no longer pay the  costs of treating preventable errors, injuries and infections that occur in hospitals.

Under the new rules, Medicare will not pay hospitals for the costs of treating certain “conditions that could reasonably have been prevented.”  

Among the conditions that will be affected are bedsores, or pressure ulcers; injuries caused by falls; and infections resulting from the prolonged use of catheters in blood vessels or the bladder.

In addition, Medicare says it will not pay for the treatment of “serious preventable events” like leaving a sponge or other object in a patient during surgery and providing a patient with incompatible blood or blood products.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that patients develop 1.7 million infections in hospitals each year, and it says those infections cause or contribute to the death of 99,000 people a year — about 270 a day.

“Hundreds of thousands of people suffer needlessly from preventable hospital infections and medical errors every year,” Ms. McGiffert said. “Medicare is using its clout to improve care and keep patients safe. It’s forcing hospitals to face this problem in a way they never have before.”

In most states, Ms. Foster said, hospital records do not show whether a particular condition developed before or after a patient entered the hospital. Under the new rules, she said, hospitals will have to perform more laboratory tests to determine, for example, if patients have urinary tract infections at the time of admission.

Some of the complications for which Medicare will not pay, under the new policy, are caused by common strains of staphylococcus bacteria. Other life-threatening staphylococcal infections may be added to the list in the future, Medicare officials said.

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I saw an article about resident abuse that is common and difficult to prove without the testimony of an honest employee of the nursing home.  The industry has labeled injuries caused by abuse to be "injuries of unknown origins".  Perhaps, they should polygrapg the employees who provided care and treatment to the resident to determine how it happened.

Peggy LeNoir expected to celebrate her father's birthday, but instead was looking at disturbing pictures taken from his nursing home bed.

"I seen a black eye. He got a bruise on top of his head. He got bruises on his back. His back is bruised up and swollen and I see marks on his leg." says LeNoir.

When he came here he was walking and talking, now he can hardly move. She had already complained about the bed sores he was suffering. Then Peggy got a call Monday to check on her dad. What she saw shocked her.  The nursing home said her father may have fallen. But Peggy says how, since he can't walk, talk and can barely move.   If he fell, who picked him up? Why didn't they do an incident report then or notify the family as required by the regulations!

More frustrating, she says a staff member told her to leave and even called police.
Peggy's brother, Randy, says it's just time for some straight answers.

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