Blog: Nursing Home Abuse - Page 30

Nursing homes don’t only fear lawsuits, they also fear fines from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This is the government organization that administers these programs and ensures that nursing homes follow the standards of care requires by government. If they don’t comply, they can receive massive fines, or even lose access to those …

The state of Illinois has taken a major step in protecting seniors in their state. They have signed a bill into law that allows residents of nursing homes to legally set up cameras and audio monitoring devices in their rooms. The legislation came about because the families of people in nursing homes lobbied the legislature. …

One of the things every person should do before entering a nursing home is to decide on a living will, especially do-not-resuscitate orders. Do-not-resuscitate orders tell doctors and emergency personnel what a patient’s wishes are if they are discovered dying. There are several different decisions that can be made, such as whether extreme measures should …

Not all health care workers have the best priority of the patients in mind. Over time, the job can jade people and make them do things that they shouldn’t. This can lead to an elder abuse situation that must be handled. Depending on what happened, it could put the worker or the facility in the …

One major concern about nursing homes is the use of anti-psychotic medication. These drugs do have their uses in patients with mental illness, but some facilities have used them for off-label purposes or to control behavior. The government has been taking steps to reduce the number of anti-psychotic medication prescriptions, and the numbers are promising. …

One way that families may try to draw attention to the problems in a nursing home is to talk to the media. Putting public pressure on a nursing home can get them to clean up their act, or uncover evidence that can be used in a later lawsuit. One nursing home in Minnesota got a …

Nurses are only human. Mistakes can happen. But when nurses try to cover up their mistakes then that can lead to pain and suffering for residents in nursing homes. One of the ways modern facilities try to keep mistakes from happening is using electronic medical records. Yet even these can be falsified. A nurse was …