Nursing Home Law Blog : Nursing Home Lawyer & Attorney : Stark & Stark Law Firm : Elder Care, Senior Care

Employees of Spruce Manor Nursing and Rehab Center in Berks County; Slate Belt Nursing and Rehab Center Northampton County; Broad Mountain Nursing and Rehab Center Schuylkill County; and Beaver Valley Nursing and Rehab in Beaver County Pennsylvania have said they will strike April 7, 2010 if they and Extendicare, the owner of the facilities, fail to agree to a new contract.

The employees are fighting for fair wages, health care benefits which will allow the employees to keep up with the rising costs of living. There is one more session scheduled for March 30th, and if no agreement is reached, nurses, certified nursing assistants, dietary workers, housekeepers, and maintenance works will strike.

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Recreational aides Renee Chapman and Olga Delgado, the last two 1199SEIU workers who were locked out at Omni Castle Hill Nursing Home during the 3-day strike in August, have returned to work. Their jobs have been temporarily restored in the housekeeping and dietary departments. Chapman and Delgado will soon be back to their former jobs providing recreational activities to their residents.

Caregivers at four Omni Health Systems nursing homes continue to make progress in their fight for a fair contract. Recently, the National Labor Relations Board determined that the strikes they held this summer at Castle Hill, Palisade, Harborview and Bristol Manor were in response to unfair labor practices (including interrogating workers about their union activities, threatening them with dismissal for striking and refusing to come to the table to negotiate a contract) on the part of the employer.

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I found an interesting article online recently which discusses the fact that thousands of psychiatric patients are going to be moved out of nursing homes and into community based facilities during the next few years in an effort to reshape Illinois’ failing long-term care system.

The agreement details a schedule for when state officials will offer roughly 4,500 mentally ill nursing home residents the choice to move out of their current facility into smaller facilities which experts claim are more appropriate and less expensive.

You can read more on this article online here.

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Gerald Coggin, a prominent Tennessee lobbyist for Murfreesboro-based National Health Care (NHC), has been arrested and charged with patronizing prostitution. Coggin recently led NHC's unsuccessful effort to pass a law in Tennessee which would cap damages awarded to families of abused loved ones in NHC nursing homes across the state. You can read the full story online here.

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An employee of the at John M. Reed Nursing Home was recently arrested and charged with elder abuse after allegations that she was verbally abusive towards residents and twisted the arm of a 75 year old resident. Amanda Tibble, was charged with five counts of willful abuse, neglect or exploitation of an adult, according to Washington County Sheriff Ed Graybeal. You can read more on this story online here.

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According to the Justice Department, two East Coast nursing home chains agreed to settle a whistle-blower lawsuit law week which alleged that they committed Medicare and Medicaid fraud.This high profile kickback case recently settled for $14 million and resolved the many allegations of medicare and medicaid fraud.

This settlement comes just a few months after Omnicare Inc. paid $19.8 million to settle several additional suits. Friday's settlement arises from government allegations that the Atlanta-based Mariner Health Care Inc. and SavaSeniorCare Administrative Services LLC nursing home chains solicited kickback payments from Omnicare in exchange for agreements by Mariner and Sava to continue using Omnicare's pharmacy services for 15 years.

You can read the full article online here.

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Leaders from Democracy for America, Blue Wave NJ and the Anakbayan Filipino Youth Group and other community groups collected over 3,600 signatures for a petition which was sent to the administrators of four area nursing homes in support of workers who have been in contract negotiations for nearly three years.

More than 300 workers at three Hudson County facilities - Harbor View Health Care Center in Jersey City, Castle Hill Health Care Center in Union City, and Palisade Nursing Home in Guttenberg - plus a fourth in Bergen County, have been without a contract since July 2007.

The workers went on strike in August for three days, held several days of protests in October, and have run an extensive campaign of television, radio and billboard ads against Avery Eisenreich and Mendel Gold, top executives at the Jersey City-based Omni Health System, which owns the facilities. You can read more on this story online here.

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