Generally speaking, a nursing home facility is a resident’s home. Consequently, residents can have guests visit them at the nursing home whenever they want. Residents can choose whomever they want to visit and can decide to have their visitors present while they are receiving medical or nursing care. By federal law, in nursing homes that accept federal Medicare or Medicaid funding, residents have a right to visitors any time they like, regardless of whether the nursing home has posted visitation hours.

Continue Reading Visitation Rights of New Jersey Nursing Home Residents During COVID-19 Pandemic

When a loved one goes into an assisted care facility, it’s the hope that they’ll receive the compassionate and attentive care they were promised. No one wants to think about the opposite happening: neglect, abuse, injury, or death.

This scenario recently made headline news when a great-grandmother in Puyallup, Washington sustained fatal injuries after falling from her bed.

Betty Torrey 95, fell from her bed at Able Care Adult Family Home on November 13, 2019, breaking her leg. She died 11 days afterward following complications from the injury. Police reports state that the staff left her laying on the floor of her room for 2 ½ hours after she fell, ignoring her cries for help.

Continue Reading Critical Care: Helping Your Loved Ones Navigate Care Facility Risks

When we think about workplace safety issues, it’s easy to default to a mental image of construction workers or firefighters. Those jobs have very visible risks thanks to big machinery and precarious working conditions. However, caretakers at nursing homes face serious workplace risks as well. This is due largely to employers’ and owners’ failures to adequately staff these facilities.

Continue Reading Staff Shortages Threaten Residents at Nursing Homes

Nursing homes and corporate raiders don’t seem like they’d have much in common at first blush, but nursing home management is coming under the microscope after Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-VT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI) directed a pointed letter to the CEOs of The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm specializing in corporate private equity.

Continue Reading Nursing Home Ownership Gets Thorough Examination

When a family member moves into an assisted care facility, their new home is evaluated from many angles. What is the living space like? What are the staff qualifications? Have there been concerns raised in the past? Most likely, you aren’t considering the potential need for litigation.

Yet among the many pages of admissions paperwork, nursing home residents and their families are being asked to sign a forced arbitration agreement before being admitted. This agreement bars a court hearing in the case of disputes, including those that address abuse, injury, or wrongful death while at the facility.

Continue Reading Railroaded: Forced Arbitration Clause Should Alarm Nursing Home Residents

The House has passed H.R. 4334, the Dignity in Aging Act of 2019, which reauthorizes the Older Americans Act. The bill maintains funding for the important work of the long-term care ombudsman program and continued authority for the National Center on Elder Abuse and National Long-Term Care Ombudsman Resource Center (NORC). These organizations are critical in preserving the rights and dignity of the elderly and the bill addresses their need for funding to continue providing necessary social services.

Continue Reading Bill to Provide Continued Funding to Critical Elder Support Services Passes House

Three women working at a nursing home have been arrested and charged with assault after engaging in elder abuse, pushing a patient, and encouraging a physical altercation between two residents. The incident was recorded, showing none of the employees stepped in to stop the fight.

The patients, who had dementia, were at the facility and should have received care that made them feel safe. Instead, they were physically abused and encouraged to fight one another, with employees looking on as the fight progressed to punching and choking. Rather than stepping in, one of the employees called out to the resident to punch the other in the face, still not intervening even when the resident called out for help.

Continue Reading Nursing Home ‘Fight Club’ Shows Need for Training, Background Checks

Falls of patients in nursing homes are often preventable, yet they are still the leading cause of injuries in seniors who are residents there. Research shows elderly adults are four times more likely to die of fall related injuries if they live in a nursing home as compared to those who live at home. Part of that is due to the home’s improper follow up investigation and care, and part is due to its failure to implement proper fall prevention.

Continue Reading Preventable Falls in Nursing Homes

The New Jersey State Health Department and Westfield, New Jersey police are currently investigating a claim of physical abuse of an elderly woman at a nursing home facility, who sustained severe injuries to her face.

The woman’s son claims his mother was physically abused, posting pictures on Facebook of his mother’s injuries which include two black eyes, facial wounds, and a swollen nose. The facility claims the injuries were the result of a fall, but the son says his mother frequently told him she was hit and treated roughly.

Continue Reading Nursing Home Abuse Being Investigated; Facility Claims It Was a “Fall”

The rise and spread of drug-resistant germs, including infections and funguses, has been tied to nursing facilities and long-term care facilities. Due to lack of staff training on infection procedures, understaffing, and not being equipped to deal with serious infections, patients wind up being cycled through the hospital and back again. As a result, these dangerous germs spread not just within the facility, but also to hospitals—with devastating results.

Continue Reading Nursing Homes Contribute to Spread Life-Threatening and Drug-Resistant Germs