Maryland Nursing Home Lawyer Blog

Connecticut Supreme Court Decision Severely Limits Nursing Home Lawsuit Damages

June 14, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

A recent Connecticut Supreme Court decision could have a major impact on nursing home litigation.

The case arose out of a 2003 fire in a Hartford nursing home, which killed 16 elderly and disabled individuals. Following the catastrophic event, 13 separate individuals filed suit. However, none of the plaintiffs in the case have received any redress, due to a dispute over the limitations of the nursing home’s professional liability policy.

The fire broke out when a psychiatric patient set her bed on fire with a cigarette lighter. Relatives of 13 of the 16 victims sued the nursing home’s operator for damages, saying it failed to adequately supervise the woman. The lawsuit also made negligence claims for insufficient response and a lack of safety training by the nursing home staff.

The policy limit dispute centered on the meaning of the $1 million coverage versus the total coverage for the company who owned the home (and several others) of $10 million. Specifically contested were the terms “aggregate policy limit.” The Connecticut Supreme Court’s majority opinion held that the policy, when read in whole, meant that the plaintiffs had access to only $1 million for this particular home, and that the $10 million was the limit for all of the company’s homes combined.

Nursing Home Abuse More Widespread Than You Might Think

June 7, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Although we would like to think it’s not the case, reports and lawsuits indicate that abuse within nursing homes and assisted care facilities are not isolated incidents.

Following the recent U.S. trend regarding hidden cameras documenting nursing home abuse, an 85 year old resident in an Ontario long term care facility placed a camera in order to investigate his suspicions of abuse. The shocking results depicted an elderly woman with dementia being subjected to abuse and humiliation, and have since led to the suspension of at least four employees in that facility.

According to various media reports, the video footage shows one worker repeatedly wrestling and hitting the woman, another wiping his nose onto her clean sheets, and yet another taunting her with rags smeared with her excrement. This is truly deplorable, and even more so considering the poor woman is 85 years old and suffers from dementia.

The nursing home and government are conducting investigations, and police are looking into potentially filing criminal charges.

Apparently, the particular facility involved in this case was actually subject to a class action lawsuit in 1999, detailing hundreds of individual cases of abuse. Then, in 2003, tape recorders set up by families captured staff psychologically and verbally abusing residents, and led to governmental intervention, including an investigation. The initial lawsuit settled just last month, resulting in a reported $7 million pay-out, to be divided among hundreds of abused residents and the families of those who had died during the 13 year long legal ordeal. The settlement also reportedly set aside funds for foundations that are dedicated to educating seniors and patients about their rights.

It is uncommon for a single abusive act to be an isolated incident. Abuse often starts with small impositions upon patients’ rights, and then escalates. It is believed that the stem of these sorts of problems lies in the fact that homes are typically understaffed due to the low wages paid to employees there, as well as the small supply of workers willing to take these demanding jobs.

South Carolina Considers Nursing Home Hidden Camera Bill

May 28, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

South Carolina is joining a group of states in a recent trend regarding legislation addressing hidden cameras. Sometimes referred to as “granny cams,” devices are placed inside nursing homes, and are designed to capture potential abuse of residents.

The legislation, such as in other states, was inspired by at least one reported instance of nursing home abuse being captured on hidden camera. A woman contacted a private investigator about placing a video camera in a nursing home, due to her suspicions that her 101-year-old grandfather was being abused, but because he was so frail, the man couldn’t talk about it. After consulting with attorneys regarding potential privacy concerns, the private investigator placed the small camera next to the resident’s bed, at such an angle so as to limit the capturing of his roommate. There was also no sound recording, so as to limit the potential recording of private conversations.

The footage allegedly depicted a nursing home worker hitting and taunting the elderly man as he lay in bed. The employee was later arrested.

The case inspired a South Carolina state senator to introduce a bill addressing families’ rights to use electronic surveillance to monitor the care of their loved ones.

Florida Senate Committee Passes Bill Affecting Nursing Home Lawsuits

May 20, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The Florida Senate Judiciary Committee recently voted to approve a bill that would have a major impact on the ability of plaintiffs in nursing home lawsuits to recover punitive damages.

SB 1384, which passed by a 7-2 vote, would require that at an evidentiary hearing the individuals establish that the nursing home breached its legal duty, which resulted in the actual injury, loss, or damage to the victim.

Sources believe that rather than achieving reform, the law would preclude valid nursing home lawsuits. Current law already requires that 50% of punitive damage awards against nursing homes go to a state “quality trust fund.”

Under current law, plaintiffs must present evidence at a pre-trial hearing, but do not need to prove that it is admissible. This presentation of evidence is called a “proffer.” The bill, as written, would require a stricter hearing in order to allegedly filter the plaintiff’s evidence, and would further require the presiding judge to grant permission to seek punitive damages. The alleged aim is to prevent cases which seek to use inadmissible evidence, such as hearsay, in establishing a claim for punitive damages.

The original proposal also contained provisions making it more difficult to sue the nursing home’s parent company, but those sections have since been removed.

The bill must be approved by two additional committees before it would proceed to a full Senate vote.

Fire Drill in Nursing Home Leads to Wrongful Death Suit

May 10, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

An Alabama nursing home is facing a wrongful death lawsuit following a fire drill gone tragically wrong.

While the circumstances surrounding the accident remain unclear, the victim in this case, a 93 year old woman, was confined to a wheelchair. During what seems to have been a routine fire drill, an employee of the nursing home rolled the woman outside, and apparently left her unattended, or otherwise unsecured. The woman’s wheelchair then rolled down the hill, and threw her into a ditch, the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the woman’s estate, alleges that the woman was found lying facedown in water, and was then taken to a hospital where she died three days later. The cause of death was aspiration pneumonia.

The lawsuit claims that the nursing home employees acted negligently in placing the woman in a hazardous area and failing to protect her from harm. It seeks an unspecified amount in damages.

Department of Health Substantiates Claims of Nursing Home Abuse & Neglect

May 6, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The Minnesota Department of Health recently published a report on its website, stating that it had substantiated claims of neglect and abuse in at least two different nursing homes.

In the first case, a disabled resident was allegedly neglected when an employee left her inside of her room with the lights off, the call light out of reach, and the door closed.

The report stated that another employee later found the resident on the floor with a broken leg and wrist. The employee responsible for the incident was subsequently disciplined, and later fired. The resident has since recovered, but her primary caregiver stated that, “the accident took a lot out of her.” The administrator of the nursing home acknowledged that mistakes sometimes happen, but that they will never compromise their residents’ safety, accounting for the decision to fire the employee responsible.

No sanctions were issued against the facility. The report stated that the center had taken corrective action, which included the retraining of its employees regarding call light accessibility. It also conducted an audit of its call lights to ensure functionality.

In a more shocking example of nursing home abuse, an accusation was substantiated regarding a resident allegedly being slapped, spit upon, and held agressively. Apparently, the staff members had been attempting to give the woman a shower, but she was kicking, hitting, and spitting at the three employees. According to reports, when the resident spit in a nursing assistant’s face, the woman responded by spitting back, slapping the resident on the mouth, and telling her to “stop acting like a 2 year old!” The nursing assistant denied the account, stating that she only put a washcloth in the resident’s mouth in order to keep her from spitting, but the third employee present at the time of the incident verified the exchange. The nursing assistant was suspended, and subsequently fired.

In that case, the health department ordered the facility to take corrective action, which included updating the woman’s care plan to include her right to refuse a shower.

Oklahoma Considers Hidden Camera Law to Protect Nursing Home Residents

April 26, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

The Oklahoma Legislature is in the midst of deciding whether to approve a measure that would allow loved ones to place hidden cameras in resident rooms in order to document potential abuse. The issue of hidden camera placement is currently up to each individual facility to decide.

As proposed, Senate Bill 587 would allow nursing home residents to put cameras inside their rooms. However, there is an amendment to the bill that would potentially penalize anyone who sets up a camera without first obtaining permission.

The bill is being advocated for by three sisters who caught workers on camera mistreating their mother while she was a resident of the Quail Creek Nursing Home. According to one of the sisters, who placed the camera in her mother’s room,”One of them had put rubber gloves in her hand and she was stuffing them in mother’s throat.” Although their mother died last year, the sisters remain strong advocates for the bill.

While we always hope that our loved ones won’t be the victims of nursing home abuse or neglect, the sad truth is that many are. With many elderly individuals suffering from dementia or other ailments which impede their ability to communicate, absent objective markers, we may continue to remain unaware that they are being mistreated. Bills like this one would provide a potential way for family members to ensure that their loved ones are receiving the quality of care that they need and deserve.

Nursing Home Fined by State Authorities for Overmedicating Patient

April 23, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Last month, a northern California nursing home received a severe citation and $100,000 fine for allegedly overmedicating an 82-year-old stroke patient with a blood thinning drug. These penalties were imposed following an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the patient’s 2011 death while in the facility’s care.

According to a representative of the organization that filed the complaint with state regulators on behalf of the family, the unidentified patient entered the care facility a year after a stroke left him partially paralyzed. The patient was receiving the drug Coumadin as part of his treatment plan.

The complaint focuses on an incident in May 2011, in which the patient fell from his wheelchair, and according to nursing home records, hit his head and sustained a black eye and other facial bruises. While experts stated the fall should have resulted in the man’s immediate hospitalization, it wasn’t until his daughter insisted that this action was taken four days later. At that point, the man was found to have low blood pressure, multiple organ failure, and a subdural hematoma. Additionally, and most shockingly, hospital admission records indicate that the man’s blood thinner medication levels were allegedly 18 times the normal levels. He died shortly thereafter.

According to the organization helping the family, in 2010 the company who owned the nursing home at the time of the man’s death was required to pay $29.1 million in connection with the death of a different patient in another facility that it owned.

Syracuse Nursing Home Faces Federal Sanctions for Substandard Care

April 16, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Rosewood Heights, a 242 bed nursing home in Syracuse, New York was recently cited for 26 violations relating to patient care and safety standards. According to the December 2012 inspection report, which was recently published on the New York Health Department’s website, three of the violations were classified as “immediate jeopardy,” which is the most serious type of infraction. Additionally, 12 of the citations were for recurring issues. As a result, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) fined the facility $10,000 due to the infractions. (The state Health Department inspects nursing homes on behalf of CMS.)

Because the facility has been repeatedly cited for serious violations and persistent poor quality for more than three years, it was put on the CMS’s Special Focus Facility list in March 2012. Fewer than 1% of the nation’s nursing homes are on this list. Rosewood was informed that it had 18 to 24 months to improve the violations, or else face the potential loss of federal funding. Unfortunately, the latest inspection did not reflect improved conditions.

According to the report, among the most serious problems identified were several safety lapses related to feeding. Although luckily no one was injured or died as a result, there were pervasive lapses of supervision over patients with physiological feeding restrictions.

The most serious lapses included:

A woman who had suffered from dementia, and had also suffered from a stroke, was on a strictly liquid diet. An inspector found the resident being fed two chicken patty sandwiches by friends. Relatives also regularly fed the woman solid foods which were not within her dietary restrictions.
A resident who was posed with the risk of choking if he did not sit upright at meals was witnessed being fed lunch by a nurse while lying flat in bed.
A patient who had doctor’s orders to have meat and other large pieces of food pre-cut by staff was served whole hot dogs in his room, and left to eat without any supervision

The report cited the facility for failure to properly train staff and adequately supervise residents. According to the report, the home provided “substandard” care to a total of eight residents.

Additional violations included:

Failure of staff to wash hands, and in some cases not wearing gloves to feed residents.
Serving residents food that was not the proper temperature
Dirty floors in some resident rooms

Three Connecticut Nursing Homes Face Fines for Negligent Care

April 9, 2013 | Lebowitz & Mzhen

Three Connecticut nursing homes are facing fines for serious lapses in care related to residents who as a result were injured or suffered a further deterioration in health due to improper wound treatment.

In the first incident, according to a state inspection report, the rehabilitation center failed to provide adequate care to a resident for so long that a wound on her leg became “infested with maggots.” The resident had been diagnosed with dementia and other psychological affects, and some time after she developed leg sores, began to refuse treatment, including medications. There had reportedly been a recommendation that she be transferred to an inpatient psychiatric facility, following a psychiatric examination, but the attending physician did not think it was in her best interests. The Department of Public Health imposed a $1,020 fine for the facility’s failure to develop an alternative plan for treatment in the face of the patient’s ongoing refusal for care.

Another facility was also cited with a $1,020 fine for lapses in care related to two patients: one suffered a fall, resulting in a pelvic fracture, and the other was not properly treated for constipation.

The third facility was fined a total of $2,180 for two separate incidents. In one case, a resident had lost over a tenth of her body weight due to apparently losing his/her dentures, and was thus having difficulty chewing. However, the facility’s dietitian was never made aware of the difficulty, which could have resulted in an alternative nutrition plan. The other incident involved a resident who suffered an injury as a result of a transfer from a bed to a wheelchair without the use of a mechanical lift, which was required as a part of the patient’s care plan.