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A nursing home caregiver is being charged with second degree murder after the death of an Alzheimer’s patient in a North Carolina nursing home. Authorities believe that caregiver Angela Almore deliberately administered large quantities of morphine to 84-year-old patient Rachel Holliday in order to make her “more manageable.” It is believed that other residents were also given the drug for this purpose, and cite six other Alzheimer’s patients who required hospitalization while under the care of Almore.

The arrest and indictment of Almore stems from an investigation by Medicaid Investigations, who launched an investigation after nine of 25 patients in the nursing home’s Alzheimer’s wing at the nursing home tested positive for opiates. Sadly the use of opiates and other psychotropic drugs to control patient behavior is an ongoing problem at nursing homes across the country. Here at Walton Law Firm we have had several cases involving the improper use of medications, which exposes nursing home residents to untold number of dangers, including overdose, falls, or simply a loss of dignity.

Almore’s next court date is set for July 13.

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This is an amazing story. A nursing home video camera catches a nursing caregiver deliberately dump an 85-year-old resident out of her wheelchair and onto the floor, and then simply walk away. In the horrific video, Nurse Jesse Joiner walks over the wheelchair, and abruptly jerks it to the left, causing the frail woman to fall hard on the floor. Incredibly, Joiner simply walks away as the woman is writhing on the floor. As if that weren’t stunning enough, minutes later another caregiver notices the woman on the floor, and does nothing for more than a minute. According to the new story, the victim fractured her hip in the fall. Her current condition is unknown.

As a firm that has handled numerous fall-fracture cases in the nursing home, including several that were supposedly “accidental falls” from a wheelchair, it is stunning to see this. You can bet that the nursing notes say that the resident fell on her own, and that she had some propensity to try to get out of her wheelchair. What’s also interesting is that the nursing home looks like a pretty nice place in the video, and according to the story has a clean record with state authorities.

As we always say, any unexpected injury, illness, or death should be examined. Also, you can never the judge the quality of a home by how it looks on the outside or inside. How many times have other residents at this home been injured or killed by incidents that were noted to be simple accidents.

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A beleaguered nursing home operated by the Motion Picture and Television Fund was fined by the California Department of Public Health for failing to prevent a serious injury to an 87-year-old resident. The resident was injured in May of last year when, while transferring the resident with a mechanized lift, the resident slid out of the lift and fell to the floor, causing a wound so large that it revealed her cranium.

After its investigation, the DPH concluded that the nursing home failed to follow a plan of care that was designed to prevent the resident, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, from falling. The home was issued an “A” citation and a fine of $7,500.

The citation comes at a time when the nursing home operators, a charity, have decided to close down the home. Currently the home has only 54 remaining long term care residents, which remains open only after protests from current residents and their families.

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A Los Angeles area nursing home received the state’s most severe penalty (short of losing its license) yesterday when it received a $100,000 fine for neglectful care that resulted in the death of a resident. The nursing facility also received an AA citation.

The case involved the misplacement of a feeding tube, which is a type of case the Walton Law Firm has handled on several prior occasions. According to reports, the 84-year-old resident was admitted to the nursing home in early 2008 to rehabilitate a hip fracture. He was noted as having no problems chewing or swallowing. Because of a weight loss, his physician ordered nasogastric tube feedings.

When staff at the nursing home inserted the tube through the man’s nose, it placed it in the man’s lung, not his stomach. When feedings began, the lungs filled with feeding material, and the man became sickened immediately. Three days later he was dead from aspiration pneumonia.

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A Sacramento jury slammed an area nursing home with a $28 million verdict last week after it found the home liable for elder abuse and neglect. Before deliberations, attorney Ed Dudensing told the jury to, “make them feel it.” It did. The nursing home, as expected, will appeal.

What is believed to be the largest verdict of its kind, the jury hoped to send a message that if you’re going to run a nursing home, you better do it in a way that doesn’t jeopardize the health and welfare of its residents.

The jury came back with the huge punitive damages award the day after it found that the corporation Horizon West Healthcare and its nursing homes Colonial Healthcare committed elder abuse upon 79-year-old Frances Tanner. Tanner, a government worker who at one time worked for the FBI and Internal Revenue Service, was admitted into Colonial in March of 2005. After suffering a fall that went undiagnosed for days, she died seven months later for an infected bed sore.

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An elderly man with Alzheimer’s disease died as a result of a nursing home’s negligent care according to a report released by the California Department of Public Health. According to the investigation findings, the nursing home resident also was noted to have dysphasia, or difficulty swallowing. While being fed by a certified nursing assistant, the man began to cough and gasp for air. Though in obvious distress, no telephone call to emergency response was made for 20 minutes (something caregivers lied about to DPH). When paramedics arrived approximately 10 minutes later, the man was already dead.

The DPH issued a AA citation and an $80,000 fine for its failures.

The nursing home, Homewood Care Center in San Jose, was owned by Jack Easterday. Mr. Easterday was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in 2007 for his willful failure to pay employment taxes. He was the owner of a company called Westline Medical Management, which owned Homewood Care Center and several other nursing homes in California.

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SmartMoney.com has an article out entitled 10 Things Nursing Homes Won’t Tell You. Which has been adapted from the book “1,001 Things They Won’t Tell You: An Insider’s Guide to Spending, Saving, and Living Wisely,” by Jonathan Dahl.

Walton Law Firm thought you might like to see the list:

1. “We’re careless about the drugs we give out.”

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The California legislature has called for an investigation into why only one-third of the fines assessed against nursing homes for negligent care are being collected. The audit that was approved in February is expected to look how the funds are collected and how they’re spent.

Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles told California Watch, “The whole point of having citation accounts and the penalty system is to deter nursing homes from doing anything but provide the highest quality care to residents. If the fines coming in are less than a third of (those) issued, it leaves one to wonder if the state is being as effective as it could be in protecting nursing home residents.”

Records obtained by California Watch reveal that in 2008 state regulators collected only $1.5 million of the $5 million that had been assessed against California skilled nursing facilities. In comparison, the same regulators have collected nearly 80 percent of the fines levied against hospitals. Kathleen Billingsley, the deputy director of the Department of Public Health Center for Healthcare Quality, said nursing homes who appeal fines do not have to pay until the process is completed.

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California Watch is out with a disturbing report alleging that California nursing homes that received more than $880 million in additional taxpayer funds under a law designed to boost care, took the money did the opposite by cutting staff and wages. [“Nursing homes received millions while cutting staff, wages“] In its investigation, California Watch found 232 California nursing homes that either cut staffing, or paid lower wages to workers after receiving money from the state.

It appears that many of the nursing homes investigated used the state money to improve their financial health, not the health of its residents, and those that cut the most staff had, not surprisingly, more deficiencies issued by state inspectors than those facilities that did not cut staff.

“There was an implicit good faith agreement that things would get better … and that was broken,” state Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-Santa Clara, told California Watch. “It was broken for the people of California and for a very vulnerable population – those that need the greatest care and those that can’t advocate for themselves.”

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The heirs of an elderly nursing home resident have sued the nursing home for causing the death of their father Oliver Shrock. The lawsuit alleges that caregivers at Kindred Healthcare Center in Orange County ignored the family’s warnings that Shrock was at risk for falling, and failing to take appropriate fall precautions, such as using a bed alarm. On July 14, 2008, just two months after his admission into the facility, Shrock fell and struck his head. He died four days later.

The California Department of Public Health investigated the 77-year-old’s death and concluded that the resident’s death was caused by the nursing home’s negligent care. A AA citation was issued, and an $85,000 assessed.

According to the lawsuit, Shrock fell shortly after admission, and that while some fall interventions were taken, they were used sporadically. For example, a bed alarm was used on Shrock, but only occasionally. The visiting daughters would repeatedly after to remind the facility to use it. Sadly, on the day of the fall, the bed alarm was not in place. It was the day Shrock was going to go home.

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