Long-term care facilities may use questionable tactics to prevent juries from hearing about nursing home neglect, according to the United States Supreme Court.
The decision came from the pen of Justice Elena Kagan. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented and Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the case.
The owner of Legacy Health Systems, which once operated twenty-seven nursing care facilities in Kentucky and two other states, appeared in a St. Louis courtroom to answer charges that he stole over $650,000 in Medicaid funds.
The 52-year-old Nursing Home owner faces up to 37 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to two counts of health care fraud. According to court documents, the owner repeatedly siphoned funds from the chain of nursing care facilities. Among other items, he allegedly spent $185,000 at strip clubs, wrote $439,000 in checks to himself, and transferred $153,000 to a relative. As the owner stole money, things got so bad at one of the company’s nursing care facilities that the state of Missouri closed one nursing home and moved its 60 residents to other locations.
As society struggles to find innovative ways to deal with an aging population, the future of elder care may be a process as opposed to a place. However, the potential for elder abuse will be just as high.
Every day, roughly 10,000 Americans turn 65. 70 percent of these individuals will require living assistance, and a large number of these people will stay in a nursing home for at least five years. To deal with the exploding elder care issue, some advocates support a continuum of care idea. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, a continuum of care is “less a facility and more a concept” that includes hospice care, full-fledged nursing homes, assisted living facilities, rehabilitation clinics, and counselling/social support services. Another new idea, the Village to Village movement, began in Boston in the early 2000s. This movemenr is dedicated to ending lonliness among older people by keeping these individuals plugged into their communities. Adult day care centers are a significant component.
Although the cancer is still one of the deadliest diesases known to man, mesothelioma survival rates have inched up in recent years, largely because of new available treatment options. Palliative chemotherapy has increased significantly since 2016, effectively replacing radiation treatments among healthier patients. Effective surgical interventions have increased as well, though they are an option only in a limited number of cases. One study concluded that a battery of surgery to remove the cancer, light-based photodynamic therapy to kill any remaining cancer cells, and chemotherapy yielded a survival rate of nearly four years; the rate nearly doubled if the mesothelioma had not spread...
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Lawmakers agreed to release $10.5 million in bond funds to expand facilities in Western Kentucky and hopefully ease the nursing home neglect crisis in and around Bowling Green.
Two individuals will spend the next two years in probation as the result of two separate nursing home abuses cases at two different Owensboro care facilities.
21-year-old Billy Spicer faces multiple criminal charges stemming from nursing home abuse allegations in a Clark County group home.
According to Attorney General Andy Beshear, Mr. Spicer was an overnight caregiver at a facility housing intellectually or developmentally disabled adults. At one point, Mr. Spicer either sealed a resident’s room with duct tape to keep the resident from leaving, or he failed to remove such restraint. A grand jury indicted the man on three counts, and if convicted of all three nursing home abuse charges, Mr. Spicer faces a maximum 15 years in prison. He is currently free after posing a $10,000 bond.
“One of the core missions of my office is to protect Kentucky’s most vulnerable citizens from abuse and exploitation – and to prosecute offenders to the fullest extent of the law,” Mr. Beshear vowed.
State Senator Ralph Alvarado, R-Winchester, wants medical negligence victims to bring their claims before an industry-dominated review board before they can bring them to court.
His Senate Bill 4 is very much like previous measures which have enjoyed broad support in the GOP-controlled Senate but failed to win over House Democrats. Now, with Republican majorities in both houses, the medical negligence lawsuit limits may become a reality, especially since a Senate panel quickly and overwhelmingly approved Senate Bill 4. Sen. Alvarado, who is also a doctor, spoke up for the proposal during committee hearings, claiming that the number of lawsuits is driving up medical care costs. Doctors “order tests they never would have before just to cover themselves, and the cost of medical care is going up as a result,” he added. If the bill passes, a panel of three medical providers and one non-voting medical negligence lawyer must determine that a claim is meritorious before the victim can obtain damages in court.
A number of Democrats, including Lexington Sen. Reginald Thomas, vehemently oppose Senate Bill 4. “[E]very citizen in this commonwealth should have access to the courthouse door,” he insisted.