- Decreasing Quality of Care
Les Wiebrod wrote this piece for the Huffington Post earlier this month, and I thought I would pass it along. he talks about two things that came out in the media this month: the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General's report that 94% oof nursing homes around the country have violations; and, the NY Times article about Medicare no longer paying for preventable mistakes that occur in hospitals.
Wiebrod points out that the Inspector General's report indicates that for-profit nursing homes are the worst when it comes to nursing violations - which tells you a little something about which comes first, profits or patients. This little bit of informaiton is made worse by the fact that more and more nursing home admissions contracts are including binding arbitration in order to avoid litigation. As for Medicare's position that it will no longer pay for preventable errors, I think that's a fine position, but the reality is, most likely the errors will continue, and the cost will be passed on to the patients, rather than the hospital or nursing home losing money.
Its an interesting article, very much like my own rants . . . so I'll let it speak for itself.
Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Lara Pettiss Harrill - Making A Complaint Against A Nursing Home
The purpose of the Long Term Care Ombudsman program in South Carolina is to provide advocates for the elderly and their families. If you or a loved one is a resident of a nursing home or assisted living facility in South Carolina, the Ombudsman in your region should be able to answer your questions. Most importantly, if you have a complaint against a facility contact your Ombudsman for help. Click here for to find out more about the Long Term Care Ombudsman program and to get contact information. Another resource to try is SCDHEC, or South Carolina Department of Healht and Environmental Control. This is the agency that licenses and inspects nursing home and assisted living facilites in South Carolina. Click here for more information.
When making a complaint, whether it is made to the Ombudsman, DHEC, or the facility itself, it is best to do it writing, not verbally, and make sure you keep a copy for your records.
Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Angela Lizer - Where does the money go?
I was looking around to day for new nursing home stories, and I'm glad to say Jonathan Rosenfield at the Chicago Nursing Home Lawyer Blog had something i hadn't run across already - although I should have - I really think everyone should know about this story.
In Cincinnati, there is a facility that houses the Health Care Center at Westside and The Terrace, from what i gather, nursing home and assisted living - in March of this year, the police (that's right, the police) found terrible living conditions in these facilities - just after the facility had been inspected by the state in January and the city at the end of February. During those inspetions, the facilities were cited for only minor violations. So a police officer goes in looking for someone else and finds "deplorable living conditions" and returns two weeks later with more officers and both city and state health inspectors.
Now, we're talking about a really nasty place - vomit that has not been cleaned up, pipes tied together with shoe strings, roaches and flies, cigarette butts in the floor, residents smoking near oxygen containers, soiled mattresses, lack of toilet paper, lack of diapers for the residents - the list goes on and on.
So, as usual I got interested, and i found more articles, herehere and here. The thing that makes me the angriest is that this facility is one of those facilities that typically houses the mentally ill (and by the way, the staff had no training to deal with the mentally ill) or the very poor, or those with no families - and what that says to me is 'no one to complain.' And then top that with the fact that apparently the state inspectors don't complain either, and these people get to suffer without anyone to speak up for them.
The facility operator Abe Fischer believes he's being somehow railroaded, see his picture here.
The facility has been receiving $3.2 million in payments, but the conditions are that terrible? Where the hell is the money going?
I do have to say, though I cannot explain it, that many of the residents don't want to move, and I can only guess that they just have no where else to go and after some period of time a place becomes your home, no matter how bad it is. I hope to never have that experience. I hope one day that this sort of experience no longer exists.
Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Lara Pettiss Harrill - Doctors: Lawsuits are a "vital deterrent".
CNBC has an interesting story about how doctors believe lawsuits serve as a "vital deterrent" to protect consumers from unsafe drugs. Lawsuits protect consumers if drug companies do not disclose risks to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before it approves medicines for use, the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine said in a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court. The FDA "is in no position" to guarantee drug safety, the brief said.
Although the FDA is considered by many "the gold standard" in drug evaluation, the journal editors urged the justices to be skeptical.
"The FDA alone simply lacks the ability to serve as the sole guarantor of drug safety," the doctors said in a brief filed Thursday. Without the discoveries dredged up by plaintiffs' lawyers through liability litigation, "the FDA would be stripped of an essential source of information that the agency has consistently relied on when making its regulatory decisions, and the American public would be deprived of a vital deterrent against pharmaceutical company misconduct."
The medical editors joined 47 state attorneys general and two former FDA commissioners, David Kestrel and Donald Kennedy, in supporting Levine's position. Kestrel served in the administrations of former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and Republican President George H.W. Bush. Kennedy served in Democratic President Jimmy Carter's administration.
The case is being closely watched because the Supreme Court ruled this year that manufacturers of FDA-approved medical devices were shielded from litigation in state courts.
However, David Vladeck, a lawyer representing Kessler and Kennedy, said the statute that applies to medical devices is different from the law that governs medications.
"The law in the (devices) case had a pre-emption provision," said Vladeck. "Congress has never put a pre-emption provis
