A 100-year-old woman is strangled by her roommate, but a lawsuit against the nursing home gets blocked from court. Another nursing home dodges a suit when a 94-year-old patient suffers an unexplained and fatal head wound. An Arizona facility manages to duck a negligence suit when an elderly Alzheimer’s patient endures two sexual assaults in….
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A little Rx for all the awful headlines: four stories of remarkable resilience
The events of recent days ─in Texas, Louisiana, and Minnesota─ have been so tragic that it’s easy to despair. Here are four health-related people stories worth reading to remind us of humanity’s enduring better side: In the horrors of Syrian combat, medical Samaritans strive to maintain some kind of care First, let’s stipulate that there’s….
Continue ReadingSouth Dakota accused of bias in confinement of sick and disabled
Severe diabetics, the blind, and the mentally ill all too often get sent to sterile and restrictive group or nursing homes by South Dakota officials who can’t seem to find other care options because they discriminate against thousands of the disabled, the federal government says. The Justice Department is investigating the state under federal laws….
Continue ReadingSuperbugs flourish as hands stay unwashed
Experts say antibiotic-resistant microbes may be spreading from hospitals to other health care facilities because of transferring patients’ dirty hands. And new research in Southern California raises the concern that existing treatment municipal treatment plants may lack the sanitizing punch needed to kill superbugs (such as the CRE microbes shown) flushed from hospital and other health care….
Continue ReadingA sick use of cellphone pics, social media: staffers’ abuse of aged patients
Not all care-giving positions carry high status or lavish compensation. Still, why would anyone take on any health care work lacking basic common sense and the tiniest bit of compassion? That’s what you might be asking after the latest head-shaking reporting about invasions of patients’ privacy: Pro Publica’s Charles Ornstein has found at least three….
Continue ReadingWhy are MDs still prescribing off-label powerful anti-psychotics for tots?
Inexplicable. Unfathomable. It’s tempting to reach for the thesaurus to describe the umbrage deserved for the muddle-headed decision by all too many doctors in prescribing powerful anti-psychotic drugs to patients younger than two, a practice that jumped by 50 percent from 2013 to 2014. Physicians dispensed 20,000 scripts to parents so their tots could take Risperdal….
Continue ReadingBlood Thinners Are Widely Misused in Nursing Homes
Coumadin is a commonly prescribed drug for treating blood clots and reducing the risk of developing them. It helps reduce the risk of stroke, heart attack and embolisms (clots) forming in the legs or lungs. Using it requires exact dosing and regular testing of its effects – too little won’t protect you against life-threatening clots,….
Continue ReadingTougher Standards Change Ratings for Nursing Homes
For a long time, nursing home ratings have been criticized as inaccurate and inflated, so last month federal officials recalibrated the standards by which they are judged for quality. As a result, the ratings fell for nearly 1 in 3 such facilities in the U.S. As explained by the New York Times, three criteria are….
Continue ReadingNursing Homes Use Guardianship to Hold Patient Families Hostage in Fee Disputes
After Dino Palermo disputed the bills from the nursing home where his wife had lived for four years and that had doubled his copays, after he had raised concerns about its inexperienced employees, he received a guardianship petition filed by the nursing home. It sought full legal power over Mrs. Palermo, 90, and complete control….
Continue ReadingJudge Smacks Down Nursing Home For Trying to Force Arbitration on Customers
A judge in Pennsylvania did the right thing last week in tossing out a mandatory arbitration clause in a lawsuit concerning neglect at a nursing home. Readers of this blog know that forcing people into arbitration when there’s a dispute that rightfully belongs in a court of law is never good for the aggrieved party…..
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