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

Here's a great health care industry article that says the same thing that we've been saying on this blog for years: Spending more time and money on improving the care for our nation's most vulnerable citizens is not only the right thing to do, but will actually save taxpayers money.  This report from the Kaiser Family Foundation confirms that these type of improvements to long term care can save taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars each year.
 
I have noted on this blog, as of today, some large nursing home conglomerates increase their profits by under staffing and underfunding nursing homes.  Who pays the price?  Patients who suffer and the taxpayers.  The fallout of underfunded nursing homes is human suffering and taxpayers footing the bills for hospitalizations when unthinkable injuries occur.

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I recently wrote an article for the New Jersey Law Journal about the new Medicare Guidelines for Hospitals and Never Events.  After some additional research, I have learned that many insurance companies agree that it is unfair for negligent hospitals to pass costs related to their mistakes along to others.
 
We first learned that after extensive studies by non-profit health related organizations, one of the best ways to improve the quality of care for patients was to prevent hospitals from passing the costs of their mistakes on to taxpayers.  So, Medicare now will not pay for treatment related to what are now called Never Events (injuries and mistakes which are never acceptable).
 
It seems that insurance companies agree....and many are joining in to follow Medicare's lead.  As this article from a leading insurance website notes:

Standing in the middle of Never Event messes are health insurance companies.  Just like Medicare, they’re tired of paying for Never Events and they want hospitals and doctors to be more accountable for their mistakes.

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A nurse in Florida has been fired several times for the falsification of records and poor work performance, and yet was hired again to work with children at a hospital in St. Petersburg. Over the past 10 years, Bernard Moran was employed by Mease Countryside Hospital and Helen Ellis Memorial. Moran was fired from Mease after he faked his time sheets and collected $118,000 at the expense of the residents and the facility. After a short suspension, Moran was hired at Helen Ellis Memorial in Tarpon Springs, Florida. While there, he falsified records to make it look like he had given nurses their annual CPR training and failed to inform his supervisor of two serious surgical mistakes. After all of this, Moran was recently hired as a nurse at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg.  Read this full story online here.

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A recent complaint filed in Federal Court states that Johnson & Johnson paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to nursing homes so they would prescribe patients Risperdal, their popular schizophrenia medication. Additionally, the drug has been found to increase the risk of death in elderly dementia patients.

Yesterday, Johnson & Johnson asked U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns to dismiss the complaint stating that they gave discounts to Omnicare, not kickbacks, and that these discounts did not violate the federal anti-kickback law.  However, Assistant District Attorney Gregg Shapiro states that as a result of the discount, Omnicare was instructed to contact thousands of doctors in order to have them prescribe Risperdal, adding that the law does not allow “an agreement to attach strings to the discount.” Stearns has not yet ruled on the complaint.
 

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