The Chicago Tribune reports on a pending lawsuit involving a tragic case of an Alzheimer's patient who died due to the failures of inattentive nursing home staffers:
Inside the nursing station at The Arbor of Itasca is a handwritten note reminding staff that "if this buzzer sounds, staff must go out to the courtyard to check for a resident."
"Obviously in this situation, that never happened, because had they done that they would have gone outside and seen that Sarah Wentworth's body was in the courtyard," said Louis Cairo, an attorney representing Wentworth's family in a lawsuit against the nursing home.
As part of the suit filed last week, Cairo and other attorneys for the family on Friday conducted an inspection of the facility, where the 89-year-old Alzheimer's patient died Feb. 5 after her frozen body was found outside.
The inspection, which involved taking photographs, video and measurements, came as prosecutors continued their own investigation of the facility. Neglect and obstruction of justice charges may be filed against as many as four employees as soon as next week, sources said.
Cairo alleged that a 23-year-old staff member on duty the night of the incident was watching TV in a room adjacent to the nursing station when Wentworth exited a door and triggered the alarm. Instead of checking the courtyard as instructed, Cairo alleges the staff member assumed someone "stepped outside to have a cigarette" and turned the alarm off "so it didn't distract her television program."
"Whoever it was didn't do their job," Cairo said.
"Call it lazy, call it neglect, call it irresponsible, call it all of the above."
Monday, February 23, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Worst of the Worst
The federal government calls them "special focus facilities," or SFFs. We call them the worst nursing homes in the entire country. These are nursing homes that should be avoided at all costs.
The government resorted to releasing the SFF list because a number of facilities were consistently providing poor quality of care, yet were periodically instituting enough improvement that they would pass one survey only to fail the next, for many of the same problems as before.
Such facilities with a “yo-yo” compliance history rarely addressed underlying systemic problems that were giving rise to repeated cycles of serious deficiencies.
Once a facility is selected as an SFF, the state survey agency conducts twice the number of standard surveys and will apply progressive enforcement until the nursing home either (a) significantly improves and is no longer identified as an SFF, (b) is granted additional time due to promising developments, or (c) is terminated from Medicare and/or Medicaid.
CMS and the state can more quickly terminate a facility that is placing residents in immediate jeopardy.
The CMS policy of progressive enforcement means that any nursing home, not just those identified as an SFF, that reveals a pattern of persistent poor quality is subject to increasingly stringent enforcement action. If problems continue, the severity of penalties will increase over time, ranging from civil monetary penalties, denial of payment for new admissions and, ultimately, removal from Medicare and/or Medicaid.
Click here for an up-to-date listing of SFF nursing homes.
The government resorted to releasing the SFF list because a number of facilities were consistently providing poor quality of care, yet were periodically instituting enough improvement that they would pass one survey only to fail the next, for many of the same problems as before.
Such facilities with a “yo-yo” compliance history rarely addressed underlying systemic problems that were giving rise to repeated cycles of serious deficiencies.
Once a facility is selected as an SFF, the state survey agency conducts twice the number of standard surveys and will apply progressive enforcement until the nursing home either (a) significantly improves and is no longer identified as an SFF, (b) is granted additional time due to promising developments, or (c) is terminated from Medicare and/or Medicaid.
CMS and the state can more quickly terminate a facility that is placing residents in immediate jeopardy.
The CMS policy of progressive enforcement means that any nursing home, not just those identified as an SFF, that reveals a pattern of persistent poor quality is subject to increasingly stringent enforcement action. If problems continue, the severity of penalties will increase over time, ranging from civil monetary penalties, denial of payment for new admissions and, ultimately, removal from Medicare and/or Medicaid.
Click here for an up-to-date listing of SFF nursing homes.
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