Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer Blog

My personal experience as a Missouri Nursing Home Lawyer is that far too many nursing home residents are overmedicated by those responsible for providing quality care. In my job I often meet with residents and their families in nursing homes. On some of those occasions, the residents simply could not wake up. Their eyes fluttered as though they were struggling to wake up and participate in the conversation happening around them. Sadly, the government has determined that my experience is not unique.

The U.S. Department of Health and Senior Services recently prepared a report entitled Medicare Atypical Antipsychotic Drug Claims For Elderly Nursing Home Residents that found that too many nursing home institutions failed to comply with regulations designed to prevent overmedication. It is well known that prescribing antipsychotic medication to elderly residents with dementia is potentially lethal, yet 88% of these individuals receive such prescriptions.

Family members must make certain that they know what medications their loved one is receiving. They must educate themselves on the medications and the proper dosages. They must regularly ask questions of the caregivers and insist upon answers. Family members must know what the possible side effects are and should closely monitor their loved one for any signs of side effects.

Why would a nursing home overmedicate a resident? First, to be fair to the nursing home industry, many times the overmedication is completely unintentional. Elderly residents are more much more susceptible to overmedication than are younger people. The second reason is an indictment of the nursing home industry. Overmedicated residents do complain and are, therefore, easier to care for with a reduced staff. Residents who ask to be taken to the restroom, or who need more water or need help walking down the hallway often require assistance from staff members. When a nursing home operates on reduced staff (as most nursing homes do) drugged residents are easier to manage than those who are alert and active.

If you are concerned about the care your loved one is receiving in a nursing home, call our St. Louis personal injury lawyer David Terry for a free consultation at 1-888-317-2525.

In 1996, Earl Scherrer was severely injured in a car accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He was comatose and not expected to recover. His wife, Lydia Scherrer, refused to accept doctors' prognosis and would not disconnect Earl's life support. He was comatose for sixteen months when he suddenly began to slowly regain consciousness.

It was a long road. His wife worked with him every day using first and second grade reading and math textbooks and other elementary tools to stimulate his brain. Lydia was devoted to her husband and to his eventual recovery. She spent many hours working with him. Realistically, though, she needed to work to support herself and eventually had to place Earl in assisted living and residential facilities to assist her with Earl's care. She was a faithful visitor for years and every Tuesday and Wednesday, her days off, she would check him out of the facility and take him home.

On April 7, 2006, Lydia placed Earl at Liberty Manor Residency in Phoenix, Arizona, a facility that reportedly provided 24 hour supervision of its residents. On May 7, 2006, only one month after Earl entered the facility, Lydia received a call stating that her husband had been vomiting. She went over to Liberty Manor, brought her husband home, and gave him a bath. Within a few minutes, he began vomiting black matter and died in her arms.

Autopsy results revealed that Earl Scherrer's stomach and intestines contained plastic bags, unopened catsup packets, candy wrappers, and paper towels. The medical examiner determined that the foreign objects were a significant contributing factor to his death. His cause of death was "hypertensive heart disease due to mechanical obstruction of the GI [gastrointestinal tract] from the foreign objects". He was only 36.

At trial, it was uncovered that Liberty Manor had falsified entries in its charts concerning Earl's care, including notations of care on days that his wife had removed him from the facility. Earl's primary caregiver, Raul, could not be produced by the defense.

The verdict, $11 million, included $2 million for the decedent, $5 million for his wife, and $4 million in punitive damages. It was the largest verdict ever awarded against an assisted living facility in the United States.

Lydia Scherrer said, "I want this to be a lasting victory for all individuals with TBI or other disabilities living in assisted living centers or group homes."

The Terry Law Firm is experienced in handling cases of nursing home abuse and neglect. Please contact us at 1 (888) 317-2525 or visit us at www.nursinghomejustice.com.

Santa Rosa Care Center, a nursing home located in Tucson, Arizona, was hit with a $17,500 fine from the state in response to more than twenty-four violations discovered in an April 2008 investigation. The facility also paid a $7,000 federal fine and had its Medicare payments suspended until corrections were made to prevent "substandard quality of care".

The violations included:

- A "do not resuscitate" (DNR) order was improperly documented.

- A resident who fell was given Tylenol for ankle pain, even though the resident equated the pain as an "8" on a "10" point scale; the resident was diagnosed with a fractured ankle nearly a week after the fall.

- A resident suffering from dementia with a history of "sexually inappropriate behaviors" was discovered exhibiting such behavior and the victim's physician and family were not notified.

- A staff member said that if residents don't object or resist, staff considers sexual activity to be consensual even if the resident's ability to consent was not assessed.

- Residents and visitors to the facility complained of urine odors.

- A resident suffered a seizure and fell to the floor and was unconscious for approximately ten minutes. The resident's condition deteriorated and he became confused and needed assistance with walking and eating. The resident's medical provider was notified for ten days and it was later determined that the resident had suffered interacranial bleeding as result of the fall.

Santa Rosa Health Care Center is no stranger to violations of care. In fact, according to an article by the Arizona Daily Star, it ranks second for complaints on how the staff treats residents and has more abuse/neglect citations than any other Tucson nursing home.

An early 2006 inspection revealed that multiple residents were afraid of the staff. One aide pointed his middle finger at a resident and pretended that he would poke the resident in the eye. A male nurse would twist resident's arms and put residents in chokeholds or headlocks. One resident began to cry and shake while describing a scene that occurred in the facility's dining room. A man refused to take off his hat while eating. A nurse knocked the hat off of the resident's head. He stood up to leave the table and a staff member twisted the man's arm behind his back to force him to sit down again.

Other employees at the facility acknowledged to inspectors that they knew of the abuse but were afraid of retaliation. They stated that nurses were in such demand that a nurse told them that the administrator would not believe a lower-level employee.

The facility also received two more citations for harming residents in 2006. In one incident, a resident did not receive her anti-anxiety medications for two months, even though staff documented chronic episodes of yelling, cursing, removing clothing, and pacing. In the second incident, the facility was cited for not creating a Care Plan to keep a resident who had a history of falls safe. This resident, who entered the facility with a history of falls, broke an ankle after a fall in March. She fell again in September in the shower and bruised her hand and tore her skin. She was sent to the emergency room four days later with bleeding and bruising. She fell six more times during the first two weeks of October.

A resident at Mereway Manor in Scottsdale, Arizona, died August 14, 2008 after suffering third-degree burns over half her body. The resident was sitting outside and attempting to burn a thread off of her dress with a lighter when her dress ignited. The owner of the facility, Nenita Schweicheler, saw the woman's dress burning and extinguished the fire. State inspectors arrived at the facility not 90 minutes later to investigate.