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.
Bowling Green Democrat Jody Richards will not be Speaker Pro Tem in the next House session, but he plans to aggressively push the local agenda in Frankfort.
For the first time since Rep. Richards came to the statehouse in 1976, Republicans control the Commonwealth’s House of Representatives. Nevertheless, he believes his “history of treating the minority party fairly” will help propel some projects forwards, such as the proposed Bowling Green veteran’s nursing home. Legislators have already pre-filed two bills on the subject for the upcoming session; Rep. Richards sponsors one and plans to co-sponsor the other one. He wants construction to begin on the facility “as soon as possible.”