Articles Tagged with Orlando nursing home abuse attorney

Published on:

A jury recently awarded $7.5 million to the family of an elderly woman who was sexually assaulted while a resident at a nursing home in Pennsylvania. 

According to records from the Pennsylvania Superior Court, plaintiffs (decedent’s daughters and co-administrators of her estate) sued the nursing home where she resided prior to her death, alleging one of the other residents at the center sexually assaulted her during her residency. They accused the nursing home and her alleged abuser for negligence, breach of fiduciary duty and premises liability.

As it turned out, the fellow patient was a registered sex offender before he was accepted into the facility and the abuse began. He was later arrested and pleaded guilty to sexual assault and was sentenced to 8-to-20-years incarceration. Decedent passed away 10 months after the alleged assault from causes unrelated. Plaintiffs alleged defendant facility was aware of the threat posed by the resident and failed to properly supervise him or protect the patient. Continue reading →

Published on:

A woman is suing a nursing home in Virginia, alleging her 84-year-old mother was tied to a wheelchair with bed sheets and injected with a powerful narcotic drug in an effort to keep her quiet. The physical and chemical restraints forced on the elderly woman were reportedly kept in place overnight. 

Such information, if proven, would likely be a violation of criminal laws as well as the patient’s civil and resident rights. Specifically, patients have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, to be free from abuse and neglect and to be free from restraints. Nursing homes aren’t allowed to use physical restraints, such as side rails, or chemical restraints, such as drugs, to discipline patients or for the staff’s own convenience.

The Virginian-Pilot reports local police were not contacted about the case and there haven’t been any criminal charges filed. However, the state’s health department received to complaints regarding the alleged incident, indicating at least two patients were placed in restraints the nursing home. Ultimately, the department devised a correctional plan.  Continue reading →

Published on:

A national nursing home chain with dozens of locations in Florida (including in Orlando) has agreed to pay $145 million to resolve a government lawsuit alleging the company violated the federal False Claims Act by intentionally causing its facilities to submit claims to Medicare and Tricare for rehab services that were not:

  • Reasonable;
  • Skilled;
  • Necessary. 

The chain, Life Care Centers of America, Inc. is based in Tennessee and owns/ operates more than 220 nursing homes across the U.S. Its Florida facilities are listed here. Cases like this matter to patients not just because they involve defrauding taxpayers of federal money, but because vulnerable, elderly residents often end up receiving therapy they do not need and that, in some cases, is harmful.

This $145 million settlement is the largest the U.S. Department of Justice has ever made with a skilled nursing home facility, according to a recent press releaseContinue reading →

Published on:

We all know nursing home abuse is far too common in elder care facilities across the U.S. But a new study suggests it’s not only the staffers that residents and their families have to fear. 

Reuters reports that researchers with Weill Cornell Medicine revealed the startling commonality of resident-on-resident nursing home abuse.

Of the 2,011 nursing home residents they tracked, 407 had been involved in at least one incident of abuse that involved another resident over the course of four weeks. That’s right, in just one month, 1 in every 5 residents suffered a resident-on-resident abuse incident.

Many of these cases involved verbal taunts, which were to blame in nearly half of the reported cases. However, physical assaults comprised 26 percent of the reported incidents. What’s more, these were only the incidents that were reported to researchers. There may be many more about which we do not know. Continue reading →

Published on:

More and more, people are learning that nursing homes are exploiting elderly residents and their loved ones through the process of forced arbitration clauses. Basically, these agreements require residents or their loved ones to sign away their right to sue in the event of negligent caregiving.

Instead, the only avenue most people have is through a privatized arbitration forum. Too often, these processes are biased and usually result in lesser awards for victims.

Although many long-term care facilities don’t actually require patients to sign these agreements as a term of admission, they won’t disclose this to patients either. And some places actually do require it, leaving family to wrestle with the impossible choice of signing away important rights or placing their loved one in a less desired facility or one farther away from family.

Contact Information