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from CBSNews.com
(JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Nov. 15, 2004) She loved to cook. Thanksgiving was her favorite. When her mother developed severe dementia, Sandra Banning was forced to take the painful step of putting her in a nursing home.

"It was like taking your best friend and just saying, 'I'm sorry I have to do this,'" says Banning. She thought her mother, Virginia Thurston, would be safe at Southwood Nursing Center, until the night she was sexually assaulted by another resident: 83-year-old Ivy Edwards, as CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports.

"He had taken his wheelchair and lodged it up underneath the door so no one would interrupt him," says Banning. She had to take her 77-year-old mother to be tested for sexual assault. "Tears were rolling out of the corners of her eyes," says Banning.

Edwards was sent to the nursing home after he was found wandering the streets. A Florida court declared him a "vulnerable adult ... in need of protective services." Edwards' criminal file is 13 pages long and includes 59 arrests, including child molestation and sexual assault.

"This is a biography of a monster, and he made my mother one of his victims," says Banning.

Because the family is suing, no one at this Florida nursing home would talk about the case, but this is not an isolated incident. Across the country, nursing homes are taking in convicted sex offenders and violent criminals. "It's a mix for disaster and that's exactly what we have," says Wes Bledsoe, a nursing home watchdog. Bledsoe searched records in 37 states and found 380 registered sex offenders living in nursing homes. That doesn't include other felons and older sex offenders, like Edwards, who are not required to register.

"We don't know how big a problem this is, but if there's no locked door between your loved one and that offender down the hall, then it's your problem," says Bledsoe. Minnesota's Atttorney General Mike Hatch just shut down one nursing home after sex offenders transferred from prisons were caught fondling, beating and sexually assaulting other residents. "What the hell is going on here? How could you put sex offenders in with vulnerable adults?" says Hatch. "You put them in a locked ward with the women locked in?" The answer may be money. When prisoners of all ages fill empty nursing home beds, Medicaid or Medicare pays the bill. Florida officials say they didn't know about Edwards' past but add that background checks are not required.

"They needed to do a background check," says Banning. "The detective who investigated the sexual assault of my mother managed to find it out in a matter of an hour." Thurston has since died, but her daughter is determined to protect others. "And you can take this to the bank - I'm not going to stop until there is a change," says Banning.

from OC Register
(April 7, 2007) A lawsuit that claims a 90-year-old dementia patient was found alone in his room with a dead rat in his mouth generated angry denials Friday from the Mission Viejo elder care facility named as defendant. The allegation against Paragon Gardens Assisted Living and Memory Care facility was made in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Orange County Superior Court.

Attorneys for plaintiff Sigmund Bock alleged that staff ignored Bock's needs by allowing a rat infestation and then failing to supervise the mentally incapacitated patient.

"The defendants so literally ignored the needs of their residents, and most specifically Sigmund Bock, as to allow vermin in the form of a rat to become lodged in the mouth of Sigmund Bock and die therein," the lawsuit read.

Officials with Sunwest Management, the Oregon firm that operates Paragon Gardens, issued a statement Friday denying the allegations. The officials said the vermin in question was a field mouse and that it died in a glue trap, not in Bock's mouth. "The resident evidently picked up the glue trap and was found holding the trap in his hand," said the statement, which came from Sunwest's director of risk management, Steve Stradley, and its regional operations director, Randy Cyphers.

The officials said Bock's attorney, Stephen Garcia, "is unfortunately trying to paint a bleak and untrue picture of the assisted living service profession in order to win cases in the court of public opinion." The vermin lawsuit comes after a series of legal troubles for Paragon Gardens.

Last year, the state Department of Social Services sued to revoke the Mission Viejo facility's license, alleging that six clients were injured and one died after improper care at the home. The company appealed and a meeting is scheduled later this month to set a hearing date. In January, attorney Garcia filed a class action lawsuit against Sunwest, saying the company provided substandard care that failed to comply with state law. Garcia also sued Paragon after another one of his clients Troy Nelms, a 71-year-old Alzheimer's patient, walked away from the facility last year and never was found.

"I've had enough of Paragon Gardens I'm hoping to shut them down," said Garcia. "They lost my last client. ... We want the department to step in and do something about this case." State officials said they couldn't comment because they are in the middle of legal proceedings with Paragon and Sunwest. The Paragon officials added this: "We take care of our residents and find this negative publicity to be a disheartening affront to our professional caregivers and most especially to our residents and their loved ones who place their trust in us and in the communities in which we are privileged to operate."

from USA Today
(December 12, 2006) Hospitals and nursing homes aren't doing enough to protect patients from serial killers on staff, according to a new report that calls for major changes in the way medical centers operate. In the first tally of its kind, researchers have linked more than 2,100 suspicious deaths worldwide to 54 doctors and nurses convicted of serial murder or lesser charges since 1970, according to an article on the Journal of Forensic Sciences' website. "The problem is bigger than anyone would like to think," says Kenneth Kizer, a co-author of the report and former head of the Veterans Health Administration.

Some murderers were able to jump from hospital to hospital to continue their killing sprees, the study shows. Nurse Charles Cullen, 46, was sent to prison in New Jersey with multiple life sentences this year after confessing to killing up to 40 patients there and in Pennsylvania over 16 years. Kizer says it's easy to see how serial killers continue to find work: Hospitals rarely share their suspicions when their staff look for jobs elsewhere, because they fear lawsuits from former employees who say negative job references damaged their reputations.

Last year, Pennsylvania and New Jersey passed laws to shield hospitals from lawsuits if they provide truthful job references. Hospitals also are required to report criminal behavior to state licensing boards. Kizer says the country needs a federal law to protect hospitals everywhere when they report suspicious behavior "in good faith and with good evidence." Medical centers need to review their staff's performance long after they are hired, says Lucian Leape, adjunct professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of a 1999 report that found that up to 98,000 Americans a year die from medical errors.

Executives also should track patient deaths and illnesses, says the new study's lead author, Beatrice Yorker, a nurse and attorney. That could allow them to quickly notice telltale trends. In some cases, hospitals have taken more than a year to begin investigating strings of suspicious deaths, she says. Hospital officials should investigate the "root causes" of all these deaths, Leape says. That could help hospitals spot ordinary safety problems in addition to crimes. They also should preserve evidence, such as syringes and the tubing used to give intravenous medications, he says. Too often, hospitals don't take the same precautions that police might at a crime scene, so vital evidence is thrown out.

Leape says medical centers should store potentially lethal drugs in single doses to make it impossible for anyone to get an overdose. "That is a pretty basic safety principle, but it is seldom applied," he says. Computerized drug-dispensing machines, used in many hospitals, reduce errors and restrict the number of people who can access dangerous medications. Taking such precautions can prevent not only murder, but also the everyday mistakes that harm patients, says Leape, who says experts have been calling for major changes for years. "We know how to prevent this," he says. "Theoretically, this kind of stuff should be impossible from now on."

from Peoria Journal Star - Michael Smothers
(East Peoria - April 8, 2007) - Troubles for a local nursing home mounted when the death of an elderly resident early Saturday prompted an investigation by the Police Department and coroner. An autopsy revealed that Betty Saal, 81, apparently succumbed to brain trauma that was possibly related to a fall she suffered late last month at East Peoria Gardens Nursing Home, said Tazewell County Coroner Dennis Conover.

Saal, formerly of 1616 Highwood Ave. in Pekin, had been a resident at the home for "some time," Conover said in a news release. He detailed nothing else, citing the ongoing investigations. Police Chief Ed Papis said Saturday night he knew little more than that as his investigators spend the weekend collecting more information. "We're investigating whether the reported trauma is related to the death," along with details of how Saal sustained it, he said.

The nursing home at 1910 Springfield Road already is under investigation by police and the Illinois Department of Public Health in the wake of a police sweep of its personnel records Friday that led to the arrests of four people on outstanding warrants. Two of those were residents with criminal records of violence, including one whom police shot when he threw an ax at officers in 2004. Investigators believed he suffered from mental illness. A third resident was wanted for failing to appear in court. The fourth, wanted for failing to appear and driving with a suspended license, said Saturday she left her job as a part-time nurse at the home several weeks ago. A nursing home official declined to confirm that.

Seven more Gardens residents remain at the home despite outstanding warrants on charges ranging from retail theft to obstruction of justice because those warrants were issued by police departments out of the Peoria area. An attorney for the home said it follows procedures required by the state before admitting residents with criminal pasts. No information released by authorities Saturday connected Saal's death with those involved in the criminal records sweep that produced the arrests.

from AARP Bulletin
(April, 2002) Armed with a new federal study that details inadequate staffing in more than 90 percent of the nation's nursing homes, some Capitol Hill lawmakers are stepping up their efforts to impose minimum standards on the industry. The draft study finds that the vast majority of the nation's 17,000 nursing homes have too few workers to care properly for residents, putting them at significant risk for such health problems as bedsores, bloodborne infections, dehydration, malnutrition and pneumonia.

The Bush administration had not yet officially released the two-volume study, which was prepared for the Department of Health and Human Services, as the AARP Bulletin went to press. It was expected to submit the final report to Congress in late March or early April.

"The study confirms what millions of nursing home residents know all too well�that their care and their health often suffer because of inadequate staffing," Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California told the Bulletin. Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, has introduced legislation that would mandate minimum staffing levels for most of the nation's nursing homes.

"We're going to be stepping up our efforts to get minimum standards," Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., told the Bulletin. "This new report dramatically confirms everything we've been hearing. We can't afford to keep putting the issue on the back burner." The nursing home industry blames inadequate reimbursement rates under the Medicaid and Medicare programs for the chronic understaffing. Residents covered by Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income Americans, account for about two-thirds of the nation's 1.6 million nursing home residents. The industry has been lobbying Congress to increase the rates nursing homes receive under the two programs, or at least to block cuts in Medicare that are scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1.

Charles H. Roadman II, M.D., president and CEO of the American Health Care Association, says the nation's nursing homes are "losing money" because Medicaid and Medicare are "too underfunded" to provide adequate reimbursement rates. "Our nation has no long-term nursing care strategy," Roadman told the Bulletin. "Medicaid and Medicare are not a strategy. We've got to transition to a long-term care public/private insurance program in order to take care of those 80 million people who'll need these services by 2050. The further we go into the future, the more trouble we'll be in." [MORE]

from NursingHomeCrisis.com
Are you concerned, interested or just want to know about health care in a nursing home? With every week that passes, the health care system in the United States remains in a profound state of crisis, and looks set to grow still worse. The nursing home industry is one facing problems.

Guy Seaton�s book on the ins and outs of nursing home life is a must-read for everyone, healthcare professionals and others alike. We can no longer rely on the health care system to do the right thing for senior citizens who will need medical and nursing care for a short period, or long term care. The Crisis in America's Nursing Homes - What are we Doing Wrong? takes an objective look at the situation in today's nursing homes, and gives pragmatic advice about how to make the best of it.If you're looking for the real story and up to date information about nursing homes today, you must make The Crisis in America's Nursing Homes - What are we Doing Wrong? your first stop.

The population of America is aging. Those of us who are facing retirement and may have to go to live in a nursing home within the next 15 or 20 years face a bleak future, unless the government and the people combine forces to change things for the better. As the general population of the United States ages, so does the population of healthcare workers. Learn why young people are deciding not to join the profession, at a time when hospitals are discharging the seriously ill earlier than ever before, to the subacute wards of the very same nursing homes that are suffering from chronic understaffing and underfunding.

Learn why nursing homes cannot provide the required care need for our senior citizens.The Crisis in America's Nursing Homes - What are we Doing Wrong? helps you to understand the very real events that affect nurses and other healthcare professionals. Learn how to you can co-operate with nursing home employees to make your loved one's care as good as it possibly can be. Lean the real problems attacking nursing homes today and what you can do to help make the situation better.