As reported in this blog, most studies confirm that publicly owned nursing homes typically provide a higher quality of care than those driven by profit. Here is a story about a quality facility in Warren County, NJ, which resisted the temptation to privatize.
You can read the full story here (PDF)
The National Citizens' Coalition for Nursing Home Reform is a prominent national organization effectively utilizing consumer voices to fight for quality long term care. It is pro-actively defining and achieving a new standard of quality for long term care residents. If you feel you want to do more to help reduce neglect and abuse in long term care facilities, this is a great place to start!
Click here for more information.
David Cohen, Shareholder in the Personal Injury Group, concentrates his practice in nursing home negligence and abuse claims, elder abuse and assisted living facility litigation. Mr. Cohen is the Chair Elect for the American Association for Justice’s (AAJ) Nursing Home Litigation Group.
AAJ released an original research report on the insurance industry, “Tricks of the Trade: How Insurance Companies Deny, Delay, Confuse and Refuse.” The new report describes some of the most egregious ways the insurance industry attempts to make money at the expense of consumers. Additionally, the new report details six tactics that target policyholders, names the insurance companies that are engaging in these practices, and lays out what consumers can do to prevent abuses and fight back.
You can read the full report here (PDF).
I am slated to soon speak before the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association on the topic of corporate ownership of nursing home facilities and the means by which many, though certainly not all, corporations will underfund the facilities and undertrain their employees. Sadly, we are seeing more and more of this practice these days where the front line healthcare workers simply are not provided with the tools that they need to provide the care that they desperately want to provide for nursing home residents. I am thrilled to enjoy the panel with a number of very distinguished speakers from whom I am confident I will learn a great deal.
I recently returned from Austin, after attending a national nursing home conference for the American Association for Justice. While my talk involved the topic of more focused deposition taking, I must say that I was truly impressed by the effort and dedication of all of the other speakers. I am continually impressed by the level of dedication all of the attorneys I meet at these national conferences have toward protecting the elderly and infirm from abuse and neglect. One of the themes echoed through all of the talks was that of our common mission in improving the quality of care for nursing home residents all across the country.
We have written in this blog before about the major problems caused by the Byzantine and mind-dizzying fashion by which corporate ownership has been altered in recent years in the nursing home industry. All of this started as a result of a number of articles printed in healthcare law journals which literally provided a step-by-step recipe through which unscrupulous nursing home owners could hide behind multiple corporations to avoid accountability for injuries and even deaths which occur in their nursing homes. As I negotiate a number of very significant cases, many owners seem to feel a false sense of security that their conduct is immune from consequence because of the so called “corporate walls” placed between them and the very people harmed by underfunded, poorly staffed and systemically failing homes. The reality is that we cannot and will not allow this lack of accountability to occur. More and more we are uncovering evidence to demonstrate that the so called “investors” of these homes also operate them and cause them to be dramatically underfunded. The Supreme Court of Illinois provided an excellent ruling in allowing for direct liability of owners of an enterprise which underfunded its franchisees and thus allowed two people to be killed as a result of worker safety violations. Although the Illinois Supreme Court case did not involve a nursing home, the concepts are no different. Owners who intentionally allow profits to be placed over the welfare of people cannot and will not escape responsibility for their conduct.
I am very gratified that as recently as October 7, 2008, the Nursing Home Transparency and Improvement Act of 2008 has now made its way into the United States House of Representatives, supported by two Democratic members of the House, along with both a Democrat and Republican from the Senate. The Act is being improved to include many more provisions, not only to produce transparency with regard to the problems we see these days with ownership, but additionally, to include much more with regard to improvement of resident care. The fact that this bill enjoys bipartisan support hopefully bodes well for its eventual passage.
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