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

St. Louis Post dispatch had a story about another resident who died of exposure when the facility failed to supervise her. The resident was left alone outside for hours and died of exposure.   Interviews of employees at the Northgate Park Nursing Home provide no explanation for how the resident ended up dying of exposure right outside the door to the facility. Fannie Mae Rooks was found dead in her wheelchair in the cold and rain.  Officers have talked with much of the staff, trying to learn how Rooks got to an outside smoking area sometime after the 9 p.m. rounds.  Investigators are trying to figure out how Rooks remained unnoticed there for several hours.

CommuniCare Heath Services owns the nursing home.  No employee has been disciplined or fired.

Rooks was found in a courtyard about 2 a.m. in the cold rain. Temperatures that night were between 36 and 40 degrees. Rooks was outside for several hours because she was last seen by nursing staff at 9 p.m. rounds.  The family believes that the staff tried to cover up the circumstances by bringing her body inside and trying to "clean her up and dry her off" before calling authorities.

 

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Sarasota Herald Tribune had an article recently about a Bradenton caregiver arrested for leaving her post as the only caretaker at a Bradenton nursing home where a resident later suffered heat stroke and seizures while she was gone.

Linda Shaw, 48, was employed by Personal Care II, an assisted living facility located at 120 8th Ave. E. in Bradenton.  Shaw was responsible for providing care and supervision to the victim and 15 others at the facility.  Authorities say Shaw left the residents unsupervised during an overnight shift in July.

During that time, a 47-year-old resident fell ill, and his roommate had to call 911 for help. The patient was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

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The Clarion-Ledger of Mississippi had an article about nursing home employees abusing and torturing residents.  Two of the nursing home workers were arrested for crimes including one nurse accused of pouring aftershave on a patient's genitals, Attorney General Jim Hood said.

 Hood said that the women worked as licensed practical nurses at Graceland Care Center in New Albany.   Cynthia Hunt of New Albany was charged Thursday with two felony counts of abuse of a vulnerable adult after being indicted by a Union County grand jury.

Hood accuses the 46-year-old Hunt of "pouring aftershave on the genitals of a patient" and administering medication that caused pain.   Kathy Brooks, 59, of Blue Mountain is accused of taking the pain medication hydrocodone that was meant for more than one patient, Hood said.

"Any person found guilty of torturing a disabled person or stealing their pain medications leaving them to suffer should receive little mercy for such sinful crimes," Hood said. 

How did the nursing home Administrator or Director of Nursing not know what was going on?  Who is supervising the LPNs?

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Another nursing home employee was arrested by Florida authorities on charges she abused an elderly nursing home resident under her care. Karlene Brown was arrested by the Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.   Brown was employed as a Certified Nursing Assistant by Bay Pointe Terrace, a in Broward County.

Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit's Patient Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation (PANE) team had investigated.  They wee acting on information received from the Department of Children and Families. According to investigators, Brown became angered at an 88-year-old resident who suffers from dementia. She grabbed the resident by the collar and forcefully dragged the elderly woman into the woman's room. The events were captured by a video recorder which was in the resident's room.

Did the facility train her on how to handle demented residents?  Was the facility short-staffed leading to frustration and burn-out?  Did she have too much responsibility and not enough help? How long had she worked there?

 

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Dan Miller of the Patriot-News wrote an interesting article about Harry Accor who runs a temporary staffing agency that provides nurses, practical nurses and certified nursing assistants to fill employment gaps in nursing homes. Accor's agency, Care Corps LLC, provides temporary staffing to 16 nursing homes from Lancaster and York to Philadelphia.

Care Corps has 89 employees. As part of his expansion in this region, Accor expects to hire 55 to 70 licensed practical nurses, 15 registered nurses and more nursing assistants.  He previously worked as a nurse through various agencies, but the experience was frustrating and the work sporadic.   Agencies sent him to homes he hadn't been to before, where he didn't know the staff or patients.

Accor said the nurses and nursing assistants his agency places in nursing homes are Care Corps employees and not independent contractors. Care Corps offers benefits and tuition assistance.  These measures make his work force more stable providing stability at nursing homes where staffing shortages are always a problem.

The use of temporary staffing agencies by nursing homes is a sensitive subject.  Accor would not identify any nursing homes to which his agency, Care Corps, provides staffing. He said those homes don't want people to get the impression that they are experiencing staffing problems. 

Almost all nursing homes have difficulty keeping adequate staff, especially because of high turnover among nursing aides who might not make much more than minimum wage, said Nicholas Castle, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh.  Castle's own research has found a link between lower quality and nursing homes that rely heavily on temporary staffing.  High use of temporary staffing can be an indicator of more significant issues at a home, running the whole way through top management, Castle said.

Nursing homes also typically pay a higher wage to nurses and aides from agencies, in return for agency staff being quickly available at the home's convenience, Castle said. This can lead to a vicious cycle, by making it more difficult for nursing homes to increase wages and benefits and reduce the staff turnover that leads to use of the staffing agencies.

 

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Vermont Legislative Study Tackles Direct Care Workforce: Study Reveals that Wages, Health Coverage, Training are Keys to Retention
Published by hthier on April 7, 2008 in Press Releases .

Montpelier, VT, March 25, 2008 –An impending health care crisis has not gone unnoticed in the Green Mountain State. The number of Vermonters age 65 and older is expected to double between 2005 and 2030 while the direct-care workforce continues to decline. A new study funded by the Department of Disabilities, Aging & Independent Living, The Community of Vermont Elders, and PHI has made nine recommendations to help avert this crisis. The Legislative Study of the Direct Care Workforce in Vermont reveals that wages, benefits and training are critical to retaining workers in this field.

LEGISLATIVE STUDY RESULTS
The study analyzed survey responses from 1,700 direct-care workers in Vermont regarding wages, benefits, training, and career development. Key findings include:

Only half of the respondents expect to receive a raise. The forces of inflation, without annual cost-of-living increases, actually decrease wages over time. The responses show that the higher the wage, the longer caregivers remain in the profession.
Only one-third of direct-care workers in Vermont receive health insurance coverage as an employment benefit. However, workers with employee-sponsored health coverage remain in their jobs an average of 2.5 years longer.
Only 42 percent of respondents received formal job training. Those caregivers who do receive professional training remain in their jobs significantly longer.
Direct-care workers currently see few opportunities for advancement because of a lack of standardized and portable curricula and credentials. However, national research shows that workers who receive training, recognition, and advancement opportunities tend to remain in their profession.
Other results from the study show that 64 percent of Vermont’s current direct-care workers are over the age of 40.
In anticipation of the report, workforce and consumer advocates (the Community of Vermont Elders, the Vermont Association of Professional Care Providers, the Vermont Center for Independent Living and PHI) joined forces at a recent town meeting that featured Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, members of the community, and direct-care workers, who gathered to address the need to support caregivers.

Several direct-care workers spoke candidly about the profession, noting the low wages, poor benefits, and lack of training for what is a remarkably difficult job.

Deborah Lisi-Baker, the executive director of Vermont Center for Independent Living, spoke about the need to improve the lives of caretakers to address the current and expected future declines of the workforce.

Direct-care workers provide crucial hands-on assistance to persons who are unable to perform basic activities of daily living (ADL) that many take for granted. Examples of ADLs include getting out of bed, attending to personal hygiene, eating, and other such tasks. Some people need help communicating, remembering, or simply engaging in meaningful activities. These workers provide 80 to 90 percent of the hands-on care for Vermont’s elders, children and adults with disabilities, and persons with chronic conditions.

PHI, a nonprofit organization that supports quality long-term care by improving direct-care jobs and served on the study group’s advisory board, notes that the Vermont study echoes their findings that direct-care workers are truly invested in their work and want to make a positive difference in other people’s lives.

However, PHI also notes that the common industry practices—including low wages, few opportunities for advancement, lack of training, and inadequate benefits—make it difficult to attract new workers and retain current ones in this field. This problem will only grow in the future, unless the state focuses on improving the quality of direct-care jobs.

For more information on this study, visit www.dail.vermont.gov.

Contact:
Alexandra Olins
PHI Northern New England Regional Director
802.655.4615
aolins@PHInational.org

Alan Krawitz
Youngworth Public Relations
800.615.1230, ext. 18
newsroom@youngworthpr.com

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Jay Cameron whose mother died in a California nursing home filed a lawsuit against the facility saying it caused his mother’s death by reducing staff to save money. 

Cameron alleges the home committed elder abuse, fraud, wrongful death, negligence and violated patient rights. He is asking for an undetermined amount of money and reimbursement for attorneys’ fees. 

Cameron’s mother, Margaret Williams, was a resident at Mission View before being transferred to French Hospital Medical Center where she died.  Williams fell three times at the facility, suffered a hip fracture and developed pneumoniacausing her death.

Compass Health and administrators at Mission View are trying to increase profits by reducing staff and employing people who were not properly trained or qualified, leading to Williams’ death.

Attorneys for Cameron, Greg Coates and Michael Thamer, argue that the nursing facility took short cuts in care that resulted in unsanitary and hazardous living conditions and left residents unsuper vised. They also said there was an increase in accidents and injuries suffered by residents and nursing staff and other signs of inadequate care.

State records for 2006-07 show the state Department of Public Health issued three citations against the home in 2006 for patient care and fined the facility $2,800, spokeswoman Lea Brooks said.   In April 2007, during a recertification survey, state investigators found deficiencies at the home, Brooks said.

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