Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer Blog

In yesterday's blog entry, we looked at several areas of concern Missouri investigators had with Golden Living Center - Westwood. Today, we continue with our analysis of the recent citations received by this Clinton, Missouri facility.

Most nursing home residents take a variety of medications. When we place our loved ones in a nursing home facility, we trust them to give residents the right medications, at the right time, and in the correct dosage. A medication error can have catastrophic consequences. State and federal regulations require that all nursing homes keep their medication error rate under 5% (which, in my opinion, is far too generous of an error rate). In June 2010, Golden LivingCenter - Westwood received a state regulatory citation for failing to keep their medication error rate under 5%. So, imagine that your loved one is a resident of a facility that can only get the correct medication to the correct resident less than 95% of the time. Would you fly an airplane if you knew that it had less than a 95% chance of a safe landing?

Most nursing home facilities must be administered in such a way that it benefits its residents. Inspectors cited Golden LivingCenter - Westwood in 2008 and 2009 in the area of Administration when facility staff failed to follow all laws and professional standards and when staff failed to ensure that nurse aides had the appropriate skills to care for residents.

Although this facility received a mininum number of citations in the area of Health Inspections, Golden LivingCenter - Westwood still was assessed a three-star, or average, rating. In reviewing the other areas reviewed by nursing home inspectors, it appears that the main problem for this facility is with their staffing levels. Nursing home staffing is often the first area sacrificed by facility owners in an effort to save money. Frequently, to cut costs and save money, nursing home owners and operators employ and use the bare minimum number of employees. In the case of this facility, Medicare.gov determined that its staffing levels merited a rating of only one out of four stars, or much below average, in the area of staffing. The following chart provides information pertaining to the total number of care minutes averaged nationally, in Missouri, and at Golden LivingCenter - Westwood:

As you can see, the highlighted areas show that residents of Golden LivingCenter - Westwood are receiving substantially less staffing care in nearly every area per patient per day than the average resident in Missouri and throughout the country.